(Women in The History of Philosophy and Sciences 2) Antonio Calcagno - Gerda Walther's Phenomenology of Sociality, Psychology, and Religion (2018, Springer International Publishing)

Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 2
Antonio Calcagno Editor
Gerda Walther’s
Phenomenology
of Sociality,
Psychology, and
Religion
Women in the History of Philosophy
and Sciences
Volume 2
Series editors
Ruth Hagengruber, Institut für Humanwissenschaften, University of Paderborn,
Paderborn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Mary Ellen Waithe, Department of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Cleveland
State University, Cleveland, OH, USA
Gianenrico Paganini, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli, Italy
As the historical records prove, women have long been creating original
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The ever-growing market of scholars and students of women’s contributions to
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15896

Antonio Calcagno
Editor
Gerda Walther’s
Phenomenology of Sociality,
Psychology, and Religion
123
Editor
Antonio Calcagno
Department of Philosophy
King’s University College
London, ON, Canada
ISSN 2523-8760 ISSN 2523-8779 (electronic)

Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences
ISBN 978-3-319-97591-7 ISBN 978-3-319-97592-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4
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Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences
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Paderborn, Germany Ruth Hagengruber

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Series editors
vii
Contents
Part I The Life and Work of Gerda Walther

Gerda Walther (1897–1977): A Sketch of a Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Rodney K. B. Parker
Gerda Walther: Searching for the Sense of Things, Following
the Traces of Lived Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Marina Pia Pellegrino
Part II Social Ontology and the Self

Social Acts and Communities: Walther Between Husserl
and Reinach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Alessandro Salice and Genki Uemura
On Community: Edith Stein and Gerda Walther . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Anna Maria Pezzella
Gerda Walther and the Possibility of a Non-intentional
We of Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Antonio Calcagno
Human Beings as Social Beings: Gerda Walther’s Anthropological
Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Julia Mühl
Körper, Leib, Gemüt, Seele, Geist: Conceptions of the Self in Early
Phenomenology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Christina M. Gschwandtner
What Is the Condition for the Members of Social Communities
to Be “Real” People According to Gerda Walther? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Manuela Massa
ix
x Contents
Part III Religion and Mysticism

Phenomenology of Mysticism, Introduction and Chapter One . . . . . . . . . 115
Rodney K. B. Parker
The Sense of Mystical Experience According to Gerda Walther . . . . . . 135
Angela Ales Bello
Phenomenological Approaches to the Uncanny and the Divine:
Adolf Reinach and Gerda Walther on Mystical Experience . . . . . . . . . . 149
Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Editor and Contributors
About the Editor
Antonio Calcagno is Professor of Philosophy at King’s University College,

London, Canada. He is the author of Giordano Bruno and the Logic of Coincidence
(1998), Badiou and Derrida: Politics, Events and Their Time (2007), The
Philosophy of Edith Stein (2007), Lived Experience from the Inside Out: Social and
Political Philosophy in Edith Stein (2014).
Contributors
Angela Ales Bello Pontifical Lateran University, Rome, Italy

Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray King’s University College (UWO), London, Ontario,
Canada
Antonio Calcagno Department of Philosophy, King’s University College,
London, ON, Canada
Christina M. Gschwandtner Fordham University, New York, NY, USA
Manuela Massa Society and Culture in Motion, Halle (Saale), Germany
Julia Mühl Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany
Rodney K. B. Parker Department of Philosophy, Center for the History of
Women Philosophers and Scientists, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany
Marina Pia Pellegrino Italian Centre for Phenomenological Research, Rome,
Italy
xi
xii Editor and Contributors
Anna Maria Pezzella Pontifical Lateran University, Rome, Italy

Alessandro Salice University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
Genki Uemura Okayama University, Okayama, Japan
Introduction
Gerda Walther (1897–1977) was a prominent member of the early phenomeno-

logical movement, which was founded by the philosophers Edmund Husserl,
Alexander Pfänder, Moritz Geiger, and Max Scheler. A student of Pfänder, she
travelled from Munich to Freiburg to study under Husserl to expand her under-
standing of phenomenology. There, she met the philosopher Edith Stein and began
to develop her friendship with her fellow phenomenologist Hedwig
Conrad-Martius. Having no one definitive, systematic method, phenomenology was
guided by the insight that lived experience can make present the reality of “things
themselves.” Phenomenologists largely studied phenomena that were not absolutely
reducible to empirical or psychological quantification (for example, the subject, the
person, the inner experience of time, sense-making, the self, psyche, and
community).
This book brings critical philosophical reflection to bear on an important but
understudied thinker, whose original contributions lie in a novel understanding of
social ontology, psychology, religion, mysticism, and paranormal or parapsycho-
logical phenomena. Walther’s background in Marxist political thought and psy-
chology deeply influenced her own engagement with phenomenology. Pfänder,
Husserl, and Stein recognized her unique talent for philosophy, but the combination
of history and sexism in the German university system during her early years of
study and research prohibited her from obtaining a university professorship. The
goal of this book is to introduce English-speaking readers to the important legacy of
this early 20th-century thinker.
Each of the chapters in this book highlights a specific aspect or claim in
Walther’s philosophy, much of which still remains in manuscript form in the
archives of the Munich Staatsbibliothek. The chapters are arranged chronologically
and move from an introduction to Walther’s life, work, and method to her writings
on social ontology to her later engagement with a philosophy of mysticism and
religion. We also consider various aspects of her phenomenological psychology.
Our focus here is primarily philosophical, and we do not engage the large amount of
psychological and parapsychological work that comes to occupy Walther’s later
life. The latter work is rooted in both quantitative and qualitative analysis of data
xiii
xiv Introduction
based on experiments, events, or narrative accounts to establish the possibility or

impossibility of certain psychological phenomena, including telekinesis and
telepathy. The leading, international scholars we have gathered here all have an
interest in Walther’s philosophical work and they bring it into dialogue with their
own philosophical interests, resulting in a rich tapestry of ideas and possibilities for
thinking.
Rodney Parker’s opening chapter “Gerda Walther (1897–1977): A Sketch of a
Life” presents a brief biography of the philosopher, situating her in relation to
members of the phenomenological movement while highlighting Walther’s own
unique philosophical achievements. Parker’s sketch belongs to Part I of the book,
which is dedicated to Walther’s life and work method. The second chapter “Gerda
Walther: Searching for the Sense of Things, Following the Traces of Lived
Experiences” of Part I is written by Marina Pia Pellegrino. It chronicles how
Walther’s understanding of the phenomenological method evolved throughout her
life. Pellegrino maintains that what is fundamental for Walther’s philosophy is the
centrality of sense-making and the obtaining of an essence, and she shows how
these two methodological components come to structure Walther’s early analyses
of social phenomena and her later writings on mysticism.
Part II of the book focuses on Walther’s analyses of social ontology and the self.
Phenomenologically speaking, Walther’s discussion of community is ground-
breaking, as she develops a view that is related but distinct from her contemporaries
Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, and Dietrich von Hildebrand. One finds
in Walther’s early writings deep traces of her earlier Marxist commitments as well
as an astute understanding of the passive mental structures that condition the
possibility of community, including the unconscious and habit. Alessandro Salice’s
and Genki Uemura’s chapter “Social Acts and Communities: Walther Between
Husserl and Reinach” explores an important aspect of all social ontology (namely,
social acts). The authors show how Walther reformulates Reinach’s famous
understanding of social acts though her engagement with Husserl’s ideas. Social
acts, in Walther’s understanding, are not merely I–you acts of address; rather, they
are also communal acts in which an individual acts in the name of or on behalf
of the community, thereby extending the scope and influence of social acts from a
phenomenological perspective. Anna Maria Pezzella’s chapter “On Community:
Edith Stein and Gerda Walther” discusses the views of Stein and Walther on the
highest, most intense form of sociality (namely, community). Although Walther and
Stein share many convictions about the nature of community, the dialogue that
emerges between them brings to the fore an important difference between the two
thinkers. Whereas Stein ascribes a prominent and distinct role to the ego in the
formation of community, Walther makes the I less prominent, giving it both a
background role as well as claiming that identification between different Is is
possible in the lived experience of community. Stein’s egology is much more
pronounced and defined: the I can never become absorbed by a super-individual,
collective being like a community or a we. Community is a shared sense of
togetherness between individual persons, and the I remains the foundation of
community.
Introduction xv
Antonio Calcagno’s chapter, “Gerda Walther and the Possibility of a Non-

intentional We of Community”, explores an original aspect of Walther’s social
ontology (namely, the possibility of non-intentional communities; that is, a con-
sciousness of community that has no traditional object, understood in the phe-
nomenological sense). For example, families, lovers, and friends can come to
constitute a sense or meaning of a very intense lived experience of community, but
the ability to understand such relations as communal does not require that they
present some kind of objectivity—say, a purpose or a recognizable social form: the
reflexive relationship itself is the community and does not express itself in some
other objective form. Calcagno demonstrates that although no object may be fully
present or manifest to consciousness, at the passive level, however, we find evi-
dence in Walther’s writings that these unique relationships present some kind of
pre-reflective or pre-conscious object-like formations that leave behind traces of
content that allow them to be understood as unique forms of social relationships,
especially at the level of remembered habits of being. Julia Mühl’s chapter “Human
Beings as Social Beings—Gerda Walther’s Anthropological Approach” mines
Walther’s unique position that all community formations presuppose some kind of
deep anthropological foundation in which a common humanity is shared among
individual members of communities. Walther’s claim that a universal human
community exists is radical. Mühl shows how this encompassing and shared sense
of a human community manifests itself in consciousness and how it functions in all
particular forms of community.
The next chapter of Part II is Christina Gschwandtner’s “Körper, Leib, Gemüt,
Seele, Geist: Conceptions of the Self in Early Phenomenology”. Edith Stein and
Hedwig Conrad-Martius, two of Walther’s contemporaries, had a marked influence
on Walther’s thinking, especially in terms of her analyses of religion and psy-
chology. Gschwandtner shows how the three women phenomenologists share and
diverge conceptually on notions of the body, lived body, soul, Gemüt, and spirit.
The author shows how these rich philosophical and psychological concepts frame
our experience of selfhood, especially when they are experienced as working
together as a unity that forms an identity. The chapter concludes by bringing the
early phenomenologists into dialogue with arguments in recent French philosophy
that distance phenomenology from the traditional phenomenological concepts
employed by Walther, Stein, and Conrad-Martius, ultimately resisting the possi-
bility of a defined subjectivity. Gschwandtner shows how women phenomenolo-
gists challenge recent developments about selfhood in contemporary French
phenomenology. The final chapter of Part II is Manuela Massa’s “What is the
Condition for the Members of Social Communities to Be ‘Real’ People According
to Gerda Walther?”. The author demonstrates that Walther understands community
as having both internal (for example, relationality, social bonds, or sociality
between individual members) and external aspects (for example, concrete social
formations like political parties). Phenomenology usually but not exclusively
privileges the inner structure of reality that conditions its external appearing and
functioning in the world. In this chapter, Massa shows how both inner and outer
aspects work together to structure a fuller experience of community. Empathy is
xvi Introduction
identified as the key intersubjective act that demonstrates how the inner and outer
aspects work together to shape the lived experience of community
The value of Part II, taken as a whole, consists in showing how unique aspects of
Walther’s social ontology (including a broader understanding of social acts, resit-
uating I experience in deep, unconscious layers of an I-center, non-intentional
communities, human community, empathy, and a robust psychology constituent of
selfhood) distinguish her social ontology from her contemporaries. Furthermore,
Walther’s original views can certainly come to challenge contemporary views and
claims in social ontology. We hope that scholars, once they become familiar with
Walther’s philosophy, will bring her valuable insights into dialogue with contem-
porary positions, thereby expanding our philosophical understanding of sociality,
the self, and the social world.
Part III of the book investigates Walther’s philosophical writings on religion and
mysticism. It opens with the chapter “Phenomenology of Mysticism, Introduction
and Chapter One”—Rodney Parker’s translation of Gerda Walther’s work. These
texts display a unique phenomenological approach to the question of mysticism
while commenting on the various structures that make possible mystical experience
itself. For example, Walther’s discussion of the I echoes Husserl’s analysis, but she
decenters the I in that the I-center also has a background from which flow all kinds
of unconscious and less conscious realities. One also gleans from the brief extract a
sense of how Walther envisioned the phenomenological method. Angela Ales
Bello’s chapter, “The Sense of Mystical Experience According to Gerda Walther”,
explains Walther’s concept of mystical experience, highlighting not only its
methodological reliance on Husserl’s thought but also its hyletic and noetic aspects.
Walther’s ideas are brought into conversation with Stein’s views of mystical
experience (as found in her discussion of Saint Teresa of Avila). Ales Bello
demonstrates the novelty of Walther’s ideas and how they may be of use today in
investigations of the nature of religious and mystical experience.
Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray’s chapter “Phenomenological Approaches to the
Uncanny and the Divine: Adolf Reinach and Gerda Walther on Mystical
Experience” fittingly closes the book as we explore Walther’s discussion of para-
normal psychological phenomena. The author extends Walther’s thought by
bringing it into conversation with the work of Adolf Reinach on foreseeing and the
uncanny. Both philosophers try to account for forms of knowing that lie outside
traditional epistemological and phenomenological frameworks. Baltzer-Jaray
makes the case that what Walther and Reinach both extraordinarily experience in
their own lives comes to be investigated under the rubric of mystical and religious
experience. The chapter also includes translations of Reinach’s notes on God and
religious experience. The dialogue that emerges in the chapter manifests a con-
ception of God that cannot be confined to rational categories of the mind. God is an
Absolute and an Other, with whom we can relate but whom we cannot completely
define. The phenomenological account of mystical experience that both Reinach
and Walther deliver creates a space of encounter between the human and the divine.
The chapter concludes with a bibliography of Walther’s work, which is impressive
and which spans numerous decades. The bibliography also shows how Walther’s
Introduction xvii
interests changed from politics and psychology to philosophy to religion and

mysticism to parapsychology.
Gerda Walther was an original thinker, whose involvement in the phenomeno-
logical movement gave birth to novel ideas about selfhood, sociality, and religion.
The volume serves as a critical introduction and assessment of some of her
important ideas. It is our hope that the chapters in this book will spawn further
dialogue and scholarly research. As Walther’s work is made more accessible
through translation and critical editions, we know that her contributions to phi-
losophy and phenomenology will inspire future scholars and philosophers to delve
into the vital human questions that Gerda Walther helped raise and answer.
Antonio Calcagno
Part I
The Life and Work of Gerda Walther
Gerda Walther (1897–1977): A Sketch
of a Life
Rodney K. B. Parker
Abstract Gerda Walther, a student of Alexander Pfänder and Edmund Husserl,

penned numerous interesting contributions to phenomenology and phenomenologi-
cal psychology during the 1920s, including her dissertation on social ontology and
her studies on religious and mystical experience. This chapter gives a brief overview
of Walther’s life and her relationship to both Marxism and the phenomenological
movement, drawing attention to some of the interesting unpublished materials con-
tained in her Nachlass. While Walther’s legacy has been widely neglected in the
years since her death, there is renewed interest in her work on communities and
we-experience. However, this only represents a small subset of her writings. Other
aspects of her thought are relevant to contemporary philosophical debates in the
phenomenology of religion and abnormal psychology.
Keywords Historical materialism · Social ontology · Mysticism · George-Kreis
Gerda Walther was born on March 18, 1897 in Nordrach, a small village near Offen-
burg, Germany. She was the daughter of Otto Walther, a medical doctor, and Ragnhild
Bajer, his second wife and former patient at the Nordrach Clinic for the Treatment
of Tuberculosis. Prior to being married to Ragnhild, Otto had been married to Hope
Bridges Adams, with whom he had founded the Nordrach Clinic. They divorced in
1895. From this first marriage Gerda Walther inherited two half-siblings: a brother,
Heinz, and a sister, Mara. The three siblings spent holidays together with their father.
For a more detailed account of Walther’s life see her autobiography, Zum anderen Ufer: Vom
Marxismus und Atheismus zum Christentum (Walther 1960), as well as “Gerda Walther and the
Phenomenological Community” (Parker 2017). I would like to thank Marcela Venebra, editorial
director of Acta Mexicana de Fenomenología, for permitting me to reproduce parts of my 2017 article
herein. A comprehensive list of Walther’s publications, compiled by Eberhard Avé-Lallemant, can
be found in (Resch 1983: 50–78). The contents of signature A. I. 1–6 - Veröffentlichungen of Gerda
Walther’s Nachlass correspond directly and are numbered according to that list.
R. K. B. Parker (B)
Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists/Department of Philosophy,
Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany
e-mail: rodney.k.b.parker@gmail.com
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 3

A. Calcagno (ed.), Gerda Walther’s Phenomenology of Sociality, Psychology,
and Religion, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 2,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_1
4 R. K. B. Parker
Ragnhild died on July 4, 1903 and a year later Otto married her sister, Sigrun. Walther
described her relationship with her aunt as a relentless struggle with and against this
interloper that lasted from 1904 until after Otto’s death.1 In 1908 the clinic in Nor-
drach was sold to the city of Offenburg, and the family moved to Lake Starnberger,
25 km southwest of Munich.
From a young age Walther was immersed in Marxism and socialism. Her father
was a well-known social democrat, and his comrades, such as August Bebel and Adolf
Geck (whom Walther knew as “Onkel August” and “Onkel Geck”), frequented the
Walther household. Her “formal” education in Marxism began in 1913 at the hands
of Karl Kautsky and Gustav Eckstein. With them she studied not only Marxist eco-
nomics, but also the works of Hegel and Feuerbach.2 As her father had wished, when
Walther entered the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in winter semester
(WS) 1915/16 her intent was to study sociology, economics, and politics in the hopes
of becoming a political agitator. However, her interest shifted to philosophy and psy-
chology.
When Walther arrived at university she enrolled in courses with Edgar Jaffé,3 a
student of Max Weber, and Walther Lotz, a student of Lujo Brentano.4 However, she
was disappointed by their lack of engagement with Marx and their limited knowl-
edge of historical materialism. She chalked this up to the fact that she was attending a
bourgeois university whose aim was to train future bankers and businessmen, rather
than free thinkers and socialist activists.5 Disillusioned by her university experience
up to that point, Walther decided to attend an introductory lecture on psychology
being given by a little-known professor from the faculty of philosophy, Alexan-
der Pfänder.6 Walther was immediately drawn to Pfänder. The following semester
she enrolled in his lectures on Logik und Erkenntnislehre7 and the corresponding
Übungen im Philosophischen Seminar über D. Hume’s Erkenntnislehre, and in WS
1916/17 his course Sachliche und historische Einleitung in die Philosophie.8 These
lectures were a decisive influence on Walther. In them Pfänder introduced her to
phenomenology and discussed the writings of Edmund Husserl, prompting Walther
1 Walther (1960: 52–53).

2 For a detailed account of Walther’s time studying with Kautsky and Eckstein see Walther (1960:
133–168).
3 See Walther’s seminar presentation (Refarat) for Jaffés seminar, Ana 317 A.III.1.1—Karl Marx
System (19.I.1916). References to Walther’s Nachlass throughout refer to the holdings of the Bavar-
ian State Library in Munich, which she bequeathed to the library in 1966 (Avé-Lallemant 1975:
257).
4 Walther also attended a course with L. Brentano himself. See her notes from his Wirtschafts-
geschichte (WS 1916/17) in Ana 317 B.V.4.

5 Walther (1960: 183).
6 Walther (1960: 185). The “Einführung in die Psychologie” that Walther refers to here was Pfänder’s
Grundzüge der Psychologie des Menschen, WS 1915/16, though she was not enrolled in this course.
See her notes for this course, Ana 317 B.V.1.1.
7 Ana 317 B.V.1.2.
8 Ana 317 B.V.1.3.
Gerda Walther (1897–1977): A Sketch of a Life 5
to read both the Logical Investigations and Ideas I.9 In 1917 Walther transferred to
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg to study with Husserl.
Beginning in the summer of 1917, Walther spent six semesters in Freiburg, tak-
ing courses with Husserl,10 Martin Heidegger,11 and Jonas Cohn.12 According to
Walther, Husserl was initially hesitant to accept her as a student. He felt that the
Munich phenomenologists had gotten “bogged down” in metaphysics, and won-
dered if Walther had followed his transcendental turn.13 As a result, Husserl sent
her to participate in Edith Stein’s “philosophical kindergarten” for beginners in phe-
nomenology. In WS 1918/19 Walther gave the opening lecture for the inaugural
meeting of the Freiburger phänomenologischen Gesellschaft.14 The paper was well
received, and Walther even considered submitting an expanded version of this paper
to the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung.15 Unfortunately,
the manuscript for Walther’s lecture, Zur Problematik von Husserls reinem Ich, is
not extant. According to Walther, she lent her only copy to Robert Steiger while in
Heidelberg in 1923, who had inadvertently taken it with him to Vienna and lost it.16
During her time in Freiburg, Walther also compiled an extensive subject index for
Ideas I, which was included as an appendix to the second edition and published as
a standalone pamphlet in 1923.17 It was later replaced by a shorter index attributed
to Ludwig Landgrebe, much to Walther’s chagrin.18
Walther returned to Munich in time for WS 1919/20 to write her dissertation
under the supervision of Pfänder.19 During this time, she also enrolled in courses
9 Walther (1960: 193–194).

10 Contained in Ana 317 B.V.2 are Walther’s notes from Phänomenologie und Kants Transzendental-
philosophie (SS 1917), Logik und Wissenschaftslehre (WS 1917/18), Einführung in die Philosophie
(SS 1918), Fichte’s Bestimmung des Menschen (SS 1918), and Seminar über Kant (SS 1919). Also
in this container is Walther’s seminar presentation on Fichte’s The Way Towards the Blessed Life,
presumably written for Husserl’s SS 1918 course.
11 Contained in Ana 317 B.V.3 are Walther’s notes from Idee einer Philosophie und Weltanschau-
ungsproblem (KNS 1919), Universitätstudiums (SS 1919), and Wertphilosophie und Phänomenolo-
gie (SS 1919).
12 In Ana 317 B.V.4 one can find Walther’s notes from Cohn’s course Weltanschauungen des
deutschen Idealismus (WS 1917/18). Her seminar presentation for Cohn’s course on Hegel in
SS 1918 is located at Ana 317 A.III.1.9—Hegels Staatsbegriff . A complete list of the courses in
which Walther was officially enrolled can be found in Parker (2017: 63–66).
13 Walther (1960: 202).
14 Walther (1960: 213–214); Husserl (1994: 160).
15 See Pfänder’s letter to Husserl from 17.I.1920 (Husserl 1994: 160).
16 Ana 317 C.II Gerda Walther an Erich Przywara, 04.I.1958.
17 Walther (1923a).
18 See Walther’s letter to the publisher, Max Niemeyer, dated 18.IV.1932, which is included as a
footnote in Husserl (1994: 266).

19 Walther took numerous courses with Pfänder during this time. See Ana 317 B.V.1.5—Einführung
in die Philosophie (WS 1919/20—Aus der Nachschrift von Ph. Schwarz), B.V.1.6—Person und
Lebewesen (Seminar/Diskussion), and B.V.1.7—Person und Lebewesen (Vortrag in der Münchener
philos. Gesellschaft, 1920).
6 R. K. B. Parker
with Moritz Geiger20 and attended the final lectures of Max Weber before his death
in June 1920.21 The original intention for her doctoral thesis was to explore issues
of social determinism and individual free will—issues that hark back to her early
interests in Hegel’s historical materialism and Marxist sociology. However, Walther
had started to drift away from Marxism and, after studying with Husserl and Pfänder,
she decided instead to write on social communities from both an ontological and
phenomenological perspective. Walther defended her dissertation, “Ein Beitrag zur
Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften (mit einem Anhang zur Phänomenologie
der sozialen Gemeinschaften)” on March 10, 1921.22 She was awarded her doctorate
summa cum laude, and the text was published with a slightly altered title in Husserl’s
Jahrbuch in 1923.23
It was also during this period that Walther turned toward mysticism. In November
of 1918, while on a train to Freiburg after visiting her dying father, she underwent an
intense spiritual encounter. Walther claimed that she was touched by a presence that
enveloped her in a sense of warmth and goodness, which she took to be an experience
of the Divine. This event prompted her to pen “Ein Beitrag zur (bewusstseinsmäßigen)
inneren Konstitution des eigenen Grundwesens als Kernpunkt der Persönlichkeit
(und Gottes)”24 in early 1920. A version of this text was presented to Pfänder in
honour of his 50th birthday, and served as the basis for her Phänomenologie der
Mystik (1923).25 Shortly after her experience on the train, Walther stumbled upon a
copy of Stefan George’s Der siebente Ring while visiting Karl Löwith’s apartment.26
She found the writings of the members of the George-Kreis compelling, and after
returning to Munich she became romantically involved with Percy Gothein, a close
associate of George.27
Upon completing her dissertation, Walther took steps to obtain her Habilitation
at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg with Karl Jaspers. She moved to Hei-
delberg for WS 1922/23, and in addition to Jaspers28 she took courses with Heinrich
20 There are a few pages of notes in Ana 317 B.V.6 that appear to be from Geiger’s WS 1919/20
course, Übungen zur Geschichtsphilosophie.

21 Walther’s notes from Weber’s Wirtschaftsgeschichte (WS 1919/20) are contained in Ana 317
B.V.4.
22 Walther (1922).
23 Walther (1923b).
24 Ana 317 A.III.2.1.
25 This work should not be confused with her essay titled “The Phenomenology of Telepathy” which
was (reportedly) rejected from inclusion in the Pfänder-Festschrift in 1933. (See Linda McAllister
Lopez, p. 203; Michael Gubser, The Far Reaches: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Social Renewal in
Central Europe, p. 257.)
26 Walther (1960: 291).
27 Walther (1960: 298–303); Baumann (1995: 69–71). Cf. Ana 317 A.III.5.3—Zum Problem des
Bindens, Anhaftens.
28 Walther’s essay from Jasper’s seminar on Hegel’s Logic (WS 1922/23) can be found at Ana 317
A.III.2.4—Hegel’s dialektische Methode (14.XI.1922).

Rickert,29 Friedrich Gundolf (a member of the George-Kreis),30 and Hans Gruhle.31

However, due to both financial problems and the lack of prospects for women to obtain
academic positions, Walther was forced to leave Heidelberg at the end of 1923. In the
spring of 1924 Walther moved to Berlin and took a series of short-term jobs, first in a
job as a nurse’s assistant,32 and then as a ghostwriter for Katharina von Oheimb.33 In
February of 1925 she moved to live with relatives in Leipzig and began working for
a book dealer, and then as a translator. During her time in Leipzig, Walther published
her essay “Zur Psychologie der sogenannten” (“moral insanity”),34 and attended
lectures by Hans Dreisch.35 With the help of Alfred Schwenninger, she obtained a
position working as a secretary for Willy Hellpach, and then at a state mental hospital
in Emmendingen.36 While working in Emmendingen, Walther became interested in
the lived experience of schizophrenia. She presented an essay on this topic, “Zur
innen psychischen Struktur der Schizophrenie,”37 at the 1926 meeting of the South-
west German Psychiatric Association. At the conference Walther met Hans Prinzhorn
and was hired as his research assistant. In 1928 Walther became the last scientific
secretary to the psychiatrist and parapsychologist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing.38
She assisted Schrenck-Notzing with his investigation of the mediums Willi and Rudi
Schneider, his work on telekinesis and materialization, and edited a number of his
29 From Rickert’s course Übungen über den Begriff der Intuition (SS 1923) we have outlines for two
presentations Walther gave on the concept of intuition: Der Begriff der Intuition der Husserl’schen
Phänomenologie and Die Rolle der Intuition in der Schriften des Georgekreises (which she presented
with Herrn Jakobs) (both at Ana 317 A.III.2.5). Cf. Walther (1960: 333–334). Unfortunately, we
only have a single page of her notes on Husserl’s concept of intuition.
30 See her notes on Gundolf’s George (Berlin 1920), Ana 317 A.III.2.6—Einige Fragen und
Bemerkungen zu dem Georgebuch von Prof. F. Gundolf (ca. 1923).

31 See her presentation from Gruhle’s Psychologie der Sprache (WS 1923/24), Ana 317
A.III.2.7—Was heißt: Sprachgedächtnis. Referat in dem sprachpsychologischen Seminar von Prof.

Gruhle, 17.XII.23. It is clear that my list in the 2017 publication (Parker 2017: 66) is not completely
accurate, since it omits courses from WS 1923/24.
32 While in Berlin, Walther attended a lecture by Romano Guardini. See Ana 317 B.V.5—Der
religiöse Vorgang der Gottfindens im Neuen Testament (Berlin, 1924). Cf. Walther (1960: 361).
33 Ana 317 A.III.3.1—Die moderne Deutsche Frau/La femme allemande modern. Katharina von
Oheimb; Ana 317 B.II.3. Cf. Walther (1960: 375).

34 Walther (1925).
35 Walther (1960: 376).
36 Walther (1960: 382–383). Walther may have also briefly worked for Schwenninger himself. In
a footnote to Husserl’s correspondence with Walther, Karl Schuhmann notes: “Walther war von
1925 bis zum 1. April 1927 als Schwen(n)ingers Sekretärin tätig gewesen und übernahm nun eine
ähnliche Stellung in Frankfurt” (Husserl 1994: 265). Walther and Schwenninger were certainly
close during this period. There is a picture of her with Schwenninger and his family in Ana 317
B.III.4 dated ca. 1926, and in the Schwenninger Nachlass we have her handwritten notes on an
article by Ludwig Binswanger (Ana 545 C.I.1) as well as what appears to be a typescript made by
Walther of Karl Löwith’s notes from Heidegger’s lecture Die Zeit, delivered on 25.VII.24 (Ana 545
C.I.2).
37 Walther (1927).
38 Walther (1960: 406).
8 R. K. B. Parker
posthumously published writings. After Schrenck-Notzing’s death in February 1929,

Walther’s work focused almost exclusively on parapsychology.
Excluding the later editions of her Phänomenologie der Mystik and her article
“Die Bedeutung der phänomenologischen Methode Edmund Husserls für die Para-
psychologie,”39 Walther’s last truly phenomenological writings were published in
1928 and 1929. These works are important in that they quite clearly lay out the con-
cepts from Husserl and Pfänder that Walther attempted to criticize and develop in
not only her dissertation, but in her lost lecture on Husserl’s concept of the pure ego,
and in her own work on the phenomenology of mysticism. These include her articles
“Ludwig Klages und sein Kampf gegen den ‘Geist’,”40 and “Sören Kierkegaards
Psychologie der Verzweiflung,”41 along with a short newspaper article dealing with
Pfänder titled “Ein Münchner Philosoph” (“A philosopher from Munich”).42 The
article was written following a lecture on “Phänomenologie und Erkenntnistheo-
rie” (“Phenomenology and epistemology”) that Pfänder had delivered at the Charles
University in Prague in April of 1929.43 In it Walther mentions the influence of Neo-
Kantian idealism, particularly Paul Natorp, on Husserl’s phenomenology, whereas
Pfänder’s phenomenology grew out of a sympathy for critical realism, noting the
importance of Pfänder’s collaboration with Nikolai Hartmann. But, more impor-
tantly, she gives important clues in this piece about the influence of Pfänder on her
Phenomenology of Mysticism.
At the outbreak of WWII, Walther was forced into national service and assigned
to work in the Foreign Postal Censorship office. In June of 1941, she was arrested
by the Gestapo and jailed for several weeks. She was interrogated concerning her
acquaintance with Kurt Eisner, a leader in the Socialist Revolution in Munich 1918,
though she later deduced that her imprisonment was in part due to her work on the
paranormal. Her home was ransacked and many of her writings were confiscated or
destroyed. Alhough Walther had veered away from phenomenology in her published
writings, she maintained contact with numerous phenomenologists, including Roman
Ingarden and Hedwig Conrad-Martius, after the war. Throughout her life, Walther
worked on an autobiography (with the working title Wandlungen (Metanoia)),44
which was finally published in 1960 as Zum anderen Ufer: Vom Marxismus und
Atheismus zum Christentum. Walther died on January 6, 1977.
39 Walther (1955).
40 Walther (1928a).
41 Walther (928b).
42 Walther (1929).
43 Walther had written a similar, though much longer, piece following Husserl’s London Lectures
in June of 1922, but this does not appear to have been published. See Ana 317 A.III.2.3—Die
phänomenologische Richtung in der neueren deutschen Philosophie, 1922.
44 Ana 317 A.II.1.
References
Avé-Lallemant, E. (1975). Die Nachlässe der Münchener Phänomenologen in der Bayerischen

Staatsbibliothek. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
Baumann, G. (1995). Dichtung als Lebensform. Wolfgang Frommel zwischen George-Kreis und
Castrum Peregrini. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Husserl, E. (1994). Briefwechsel Bd. 2. Die Münchener Phänomenologie (Husserliana Dokumente,
III). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Parker, R. (2017). Gerda Walther and the phenomenological community. In Acta Mexicana de
Fenomenología (Vol. 2, pp. 45–66).
Resch, A. (1983). Gerda Walther. Innsbruck: Resch.
Walther, G. (1922). Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften (mit einem Anhang zur
Phänomenologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften). Max Halle: Niemeyer.
Walther, G. (1923a). Ausführliches Sachregister zu Edmund Husserls “Ideen zu einer reinen
Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie Bd. 1”. Halle: Max Niemeyer.
Walther, G. (1923b). Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften (mit einem Anhang
zur Phänomenologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften). In Jahrbuch für Philosophie und
phänomenologische Forschung (Vol. 6, pp. 1–158).
Walther, G. (1925). Zur Psychologie der sogenannten “moral insanity”. In Japanisch-deutsche
Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Technik (Vol. 3, pp. 174–184).
Walther, G. (1927). Zur innenpsychischen Struktur der Schizophrenie. In Zeitschrift für die gesamte
Neurologie und Psychiatrie (Vol. 108, pp. 56–85).
Walther, G. (1928a). Ludwig Klages und sein Kampf gegen den ‘Geist’. In Philosophischer Anzeiger
(Vol. 3(1), pp. 48–90).
Walther, G. (1928b). Sören Kierkegaards Psychologie der Verzweiflung. In Zeitschrift für Men-
schenkunde, Blätter für Charakterologie und angewandte Psychologie (Vol. 4(4&6), pp. 208–219,
336).
Walther, G. (1929). Ein Münchner Philosoph. In München-Augsburger Abendzeitung (Vol. 124,
p. 7).
Walther, G. (1955). Die Bedeutung der phänomenologischen Methode Edmund Husserls für die
Parapsychologie. Psychophysikalische Zeitschrift, 1(22–29), 37–40.
Walther, G. (1960). Zum anderen Ufer. Vom Marxismus und Atheismus zum Christentum. Remagen:
Otto Reichl.
Rodney K. B. Parker is a postdoc and lead researcher on Women in Early Phenomenology at

the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists at Paderborn University. After
receiving his PhD in 2013, he worked at Western University and its affiliated Colleges at the rank
of Assistant Professor (Adjunct) before moving to Germany in 2017. He publishes widely on the
history of the phenomenological movement and Husserl’s idealism.
Gerda Walther: Searching for the Sense
of Things, Following the Traces of Lived
Experiences
Marina Pia Pellegrino
Abstract Gerda Walther’s life and thought can be grasped through her various inter-
ests, including human community, the paranormal, and mysticism. These seemingly
divergent topics are held together through her use of Edmund Husserl’s phenomeno-
logical method. Tracing the flow of lived experience back to its point of origin,
Walther distinguishes different “spheres” constitutive of the fundamental human
essence (namely, the vital-bodily, the feelings of the psyche, and the sphere of the
spirit, which is marked by a spiritual, personal core). Her analysis makes evident
a background or embedment that lies behind the I, from which lived experiences
arise. This “background” life of the I is essential not only to describe experiences
like telepathy but also to grasp communal and mystical phenomena. The I-center is
always necessary for lived experience to be actualized
Keywords Fundamental human essence · I-center · Telepathy · Embedment

Community · Mysticism
Orienting Oneself in Multiple Experiences
One finds the question of the sense or meaning of things addressed in Gerda Walther’s
early works. In the preface to the second edition of her Phenomenology of Mysticism,
she claims that life would have appeared meaningless or even not worthy of being
lived, had the reality of the divine not existed. She notes that the idea of a divine
reality, especially in specific contexts she knew well, including Marxist and atheistic
ones, was presented as the “trick of priests,” as the “self-delusion of human beings
fleeing the world,” a “sign of decadence of those belonging to certain social classes
Translated by Antonio Calcagno.
M. P. Pellegrino (B)
Italian Centre for Phenomenological Research, Rome, Italy
e-mail: marinapiapellegrino@gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_2
12 M. P. Pellegrino
whose historical task had come to its end.”1 Through diverse lived experiences,
Walther claims to have discovered the world of spirit, which was strictly understood
as having a divine foundation. She began to become aware of the dominant prejudices
of her education and began to seek other more convincing approaches to the question
of the divine (for example, a study of the writings of mystics, to obtain a clearer
understanding of the interior universe that was slowly unfolding in her).
A unique characteristic of Walther’s existential and speculative itinerary was her
ability to hold together multiple interests and areas of research, including her writings
on society and human community, parapsychology, theosophy, anthroposophy, Yoga,
and mysticism, which she saw as a phenomenon common to all religions.2 She holds
all of the foregoing interests together thanks to the philosophical method deployed
by phenomenology. By being faithful to the things themselves, following Husserl’s
dictum, it becomes evident that all that appears (phenomenon) is a complex reality
(that is, every appearing has multiple aspects and its own proper essential character-
istics that both distinguish it from and connects it to other phenomena). Following the
phenomenological philosophical line, Walther is able to examine, without prejudice,
that which presents itself as “exceptional” or lying outside the normal state of affairs
(for example, paranormal experiences), for we are able to “bracket” the judgments
and preconceptions that are tacitly given in the natural and spontaneous living of our
daily lives. I would like to underscore here Walther’s courage as a thinker, for she
seeks to understand the meaning of her own and others’ experiences, mindful of the
need to evaluate them in a rational manner. Phenomenology, especially Husserlian
phenomenology, convinces Walther of its philosophical validity because it deploys
the epoché as an essential step to be taken in order to begin a rigorous philosophical
investigation without prejudice and by investigating everything.3
The Phenomenological Method
As a young student, Walther first encountered phenomenology while following the

lectures of Alexander Pfänder at the University of Munich. He introduced Walther to
questions about knowledge of the psyche. The thought of her first teacher of philos-
ophy would come to inform much of Walther’s early analysis, and her learning was
also amplified by following Husserl’s courses at the University of Freiburg. Although
Pfänder had devoted himself to understanding the life of the human psyche or soul
to develop a comprehensive psychology that could combat the soulless psychology
of positivism, he could not follow Husserl’s transcendental turn. Edith Stein, whom
1 Gerda Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik (Olten: Walter Verlag, 1955), 16.
2 Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik, 18.
3 Alexander Pfänder makes use of the epoché, but as Michael Konrad asserts, “It is not a permanent
attitude, as it is for Husserl; rather, it is a provisory measure of precaution taken against hasty
conclusions.” See Michael Konrad, “Alexander Pfänder. L’anima umana e i suoi moti”, in Le fonti
fenomenologiche della psicologia, ed. by A. Ales Bello and A. De Luca (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2005),
136.
Gerda Walther: Searching for the Sense of Things … 13
Walther knew while frequenting Stein’s introductory courses on phenomenology that

she gave for Husserl, also took seriously Pfänder’s work, but Stein felt that Pfänder
did not fully address the relations between body and the soul, and between the soul
and spirit. He did not undertake a comprehensive investigation of the soul as such
and as an individual soul.4
The study of the soul would remain foundational for both women phenomenolo-
gists. They both followed a personal theoretical–existential itinerary to know human
being in itself and in its multiple relations. In Stein’s work, her intent to clarify the
three aspects of the human (namely, the corporeal, psychic, and spiritual aspects)
can already be found at the end of her doctoral dissertation on empathy. She asks
whether it is possible to access the spiritual lives of other individuals without the
mediation of the body, and whether one can think of relations between persons as
purely spiritual.5 We know that Stein’s continued research on spirit led her to an
analysis of the essential possibility that there exist pure, created spirits (for example,
angels). This is a possibility that throws new light on our understanding of the spirit
or the spiritual human soul. Also revealing is the fact that Walther wanted to enter,
through reflection, into the inside of certain lived experiences, including those of
telepathy, to comprehend how the presence of the other invades interiority, but from
“behind,” from the background of consciousness. In such experiences the other is
not present before me in flesh and blood. In certain cases, however, this invasion
by the other happens without the I simply representing the outside other, whose
“atmosphere saturates” [durchtränkt] the interiority of psyche.
For both Stein and Walther the complexity of being an embodied, psycho-spiritual
person is analysed through the various layers or aspects constituent of the human
being, from the periphery to the deep-seated core, from that which comes to light to
that which remains hidden. Following Husserl’s classes at Freiburg, Walther devel-
oped a profound understanding of his thought, as developed in his book Ideas Per-
taining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy. She even
prepared an index for the work.6 In this work, Husserl makes two important foun-
dational moves. First, with eidetic intuition the subject captures the essence or sense
(eidos) of the object, be it external or internal, to which the subject is intentionally
directed. Sensible perceptions as well as intellectual ones of an essence become
legitimate sources of knowledge. To “see,” to intuit “what the thing is,” one needs
to “bracket” the thesis inherent in the spontaneous natural attitude, which posits
naively the existence of the world in its factuality. “Bracketing” or the epoché does
not possess a sceptical sense of negation or radical doubt; rather, what remains brack-
eted is not negated: it is only temporarily “put out of circulation” [Ausschaltung].
The second move is the transcendental reduction, which assumes that an object of
4 See Edith Stein, Die Seelenburg in Endliches und Ewiges Sein. Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn
des Seins, introduced and ed. by A.U. Müller, ESGA 11/12 (Freiburg: Herder, 2006), 522.
5 Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. by Waltraut Stein (Washington, DC: ICS Publica-
tions), 117–118.
6 Gerda Walther, Ausführliches Sachregister zu Edmund Husserls (Ideen zu einer reinen
Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Vol. 1) (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1923).

14 M. P. Pellegrino
consciousness is correlated to a lived experience [Erlebnis] of pure consciousness.

Pure consciousness was the domain that Husserl marked off as a field of phenomeno-
logical investigation. He was interested in the pure flow of lived experiences, which
emerge and pass away much like the waves of the sea and which have the conscious
I as their starting point.
In the introductory chapter of her long essay on social communities, Walther
considers at length the difference between eidetic and transcendental reductions.7
The former is connected to ontology (understood in the sense of Husserl’s regional
ontologies) and seeks to grasp the essentiality of objects. The latter is phenomeno-
logical in the sense that it investigates the modes of manifestation of the objects
within the conscious flow of lived experiences (that is, within pure consciousness).
Walther demonstrates how these two reductions intersect: the object, which stands
opposite the I and, therefore, which transcends the I and which ontology defines as an
essence, is also perceived, remembered, etc.; the object as a lived experience is lived
“immanently” and is investigated in its essence by phenomenology. For example, in
her essay on community, Walther asks what community is and what are its essential
traits, but she also asks about the essence of the communal lived experience and how
members consciously constitute themselves as members of a community. In addition,
in her work on mysticism she wishes to show the essential characteristics of the lived
experience of the mystical, understood as a correlate of a particular region that is the
reality of the divine.
The Fundamental Human Essence: The I-Center

and Embeddedness
Walther seeks in her work to understand the fundamental essence [Grundwesen]

of the human being, which, metaphysically, could be understood as a kind of “ent-
elechy.” By referring to entelechy, a concept taken up by Aristotle, Stein, and Hedwig
Conrad-Martius, Walther wishes to delineate a real, metaphysical essence or an orig-
inary type (Urtypos), the eidos that incarnates and actualizes itself in real, living
beings. The force (their real founding source, Quellgrund) that one finds in this
essence is found in living beings.8 One finds in plants, therefore, a fundamental
essence of a living body, and in animals one finds a psycho-corporeal one. In human
beings one finds a corporeal-psycho-spiritual essence. Examining the flow of lived
experiences, Walther uncovers the human essence as a personal spiritual core, which
Edith Stein also develops in her own phenomenological anthropology that draws
inspiration from her encounter with medieval philosophy.
Walther traces the content of certain, particularly exceptional (“Es gibt … beson-
ders ausgezeichnete Erlebnisse”) lived experiences that form the very foundations
7 Gerda Walther, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften”, in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und
phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. VI (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1923), 1–17.
8 Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik, 45–46.
of our being. These particular lived experiences flow in a certain direction and erupt
into a “new creation” [Neuschöpfung] that the I is able to grasp in a pure intuition, as
an originary phenomenon with its own essence.9 But how can one go behind lived
experiences, especially if they unceasingly flow? Husserl, in Ideas I, affirms that
“the phenomenological method completely moves within acts of reflection.”10 The
fact that every I lives its own lived experiences does not mean that they are com-
pletely visible; rather, they can come to appear through reflection. Reflection on lived
experiences “retained” by pure consciousness, in themselves and in their structure,
is like an “interior light,” following an image of Edith Stein, that illumines the flow
of lived experiences. Even in the flowing out and passing away of lived experiences,
reflection can clarify what appears, even though the I may not appear as present.11
Originary consciousness, which has collected and conserved within the unity of a
lived experience (for example, joy) the past moments of the lived experience, is able
to grasp the lived experience as an object of reflection, as an originary object whose
constituent aspects are able to be observed. Walther remarks:
We grasp our life and our psycho-spiritual experience as fully living when we observe it
from within, above all, when the I reflexively turns its interior gaze backward to a lived
experience that it is living without entering into a new experience that observes another
experience without suffocating or disturbing it. The I must interiorly focus itself such that it
can be led by the lived experience, silently observing and accompanying it [instead of, for
example, unfavorably analyzing and judging it]. The essence of the lived experience must
not be changed within its “normal” flow. Since the essence of the metaphysical and real core
of personality is psycho-spiritual, it must also undoubtedly be able to be brought to interior
givenness in “reflective” contemplation such that it becomes immediately intelligible in a
living manner and not through the long path of a series of deductions.12
There also exist moments that do not appear on account of the gaze of the I:
there are stirrings [Regungen] that come out of a background [Hintergrund] that
lies behind (a tergo) the I that Walther describes as “being embedded” [Einbettung].
Here, the I is not a pure subject of consciousness, but is an I embedded within the
background of psyche. If we do not carry out the phenomenological reduction on the
pure I, Walther notes, we speak of the I and its background within the framework
of a concrete psychological attitude. Again, the I is given, but it is given as a real
“point” (not in the spatial sense) in a subject: it is an I-center [Ichzentrum], following
the terminology of Pfänder, or it is a moment endowed with the consciousness of
a real psychic subject and with power over the self that clearly expresses itself in
acts of will.13 We see this power of the will in lived experience (for example, I can
choose, not to cede to the emergence in me of a certain possible embedment, for
9 Walther, Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften, 16.

10 Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und einer phänomenologische Philoso-
phie III/I, ed. by K. Schumann (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 144.
11 Edith Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie, Hinführung, ed. and introduced by Claudia Mariéle
Wulf (Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe No. 8) (Freiburg: Herder, 2004), 106. AU: should “Hinführung,”
be removed?
13 Walther, Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften, 13.
16 M. P. Pellegrino
I can choose to repress, remove, or even quash it). Hence, the I is free in relation
to such risings in me (we shall see how important the will is for telepathy). The I,
however, cannot cause the risings to occur, but it can place itself in another position
vis-à-vis these moments of emergence in me insofar as the I can allow the emerging
moments to appear or it can likewise negate them. The I, then, can remain in contact
with the sources from which the spirituality of the person emerges. This contact can
also serve as the basis for the formation of enduring or habitual attitude necessary for
the communal union between human and/or divine persons. Actual lived experience
can become habitual.
Walther sketches a description of the I that is different from the usual one in which
the I is conceived as simply tending to something. The I is capable of lifting itself
out of its own lived experiences in an act of reflection (“sich über seine Erlebnisse zu
erheben”).14 Simply being “conscious of” does not in itself guarantee the freedom
of the I. Although the I may know its lived experiences, it can also freely choose to
abandon itself to living the very flow of the experiences. This moment of the force
of the will, which implies self-consciousness but is not reducible to it, is a sign of
freedom proper to human beings alone. Here, we also can establish the difference
between the purely psychic and spiritual aspects of human beings.
In embedment or sedimentation, one finds, for example, buried lived experiences
that were once actual and which can become objects of memory. One also finds psy-
chic dispositions in which are inscribed the risings of habitual or potential lived expe-
riences. In telepathy, embedded movements or risings of another individual appear
within the psychic experiences of a subject. It is important to recall the importance
that Husserl ascribes to this obscure base, even though he does not treat parapsychic
or mystical experiences. In Ideas II, which Edith Stein edited and pieced together
from the “Master’s” notes, one finds in the chapter dedicated to motivation as the
fundamental law of the spirit a section titled “The Spiritual I and its Base”: “This
specifically spiritual I, the subject of spiritual acts, the personality, depends on an
obscure base of characterological inclinations, originary, hidden dispositions, and
nature.”15
The difficulty of the description lies in the aspect of the I embedded in an obscure
“where” that coincides with a pure I. This background [Hintergrund], embedment
[Einbettung], self [Selbst], or subconsciousness [Unterbewusstsein] (even though
Walther prefers the term embedment because it is less contaminated by various
other senses, she also uses the other aforementioned terms) is a background lived
experience [Erlebnis-hintergrund], a lived backdrop that manifests itself to the gaze
of the I in phenomenological reflection. Evidently, there is a need here for a universal
structure with its own essential characteristics in order for the concrete living to
be grasped. Because consciousness accompanies the lived experience and because
living is structurally present in all lived experiences, knowledge, reflection, and the
description of all individual lived experiences become possible, including those that
emerge from the profound depths.

15 Edmund Husserl, Ideen II, 276.
By deploying concrete experiences, Walther retrospectively reflects on the direc-

tions that the lived experiences follow. She asks: How do lived experiences flow from
the I? For example, while we may find ourselves in a determined lived experience,
we could suddenly be grasped by another one. While looking from the window, for
example, we become conscious of a problem, as if this problem emerged from the
obscure background of the I, as if it had been dragged out from what the I had been
observing; the problem is led back to my interiority to reflect on it.16 When the I
moves from one lived experience to another, we experience how the lived experience
emerges from one direction in the psychic interior background, in its embedment,
and how only later it drags the I into itself such that its point of departure and the
conscious I itself begin to fuse with one another.
One can distinguish different “spheres” in an embedment, according to the direc-
tion taken by the lived experience as it emerges from its own embeddedness. In these
spheres the I can grasp its own spiritual person, its fundamental metaphysically real
essence, as an ultimate form of givenness. The spiritual sphere, understood as a
source of lived experiences (perceptions and ultimate, scientific, artistic, ethical, etc.
intuitions) is placed in a layer of embedment “above” the I. Walther observes:
Perhaps the I finds itself in a difficult moral crisis that affects its entire life and, deprived of
any form of help, the I finds itself facing its own impulses that resist the situation. Suddenly,
the crisis is no longer; the lifting of the crisis feels like an interior tremor: one finds oneself
shaken free from his or her confines in that interior circle of light, which discloses itself
above the I and which seems to exist “above” and “behind” the I’s habitual embedment.
Now the I suddenly sees what it clearly and distinctly must do. It now stands in a pure and
clear interior light, raised “above” the confusion of its instincts.17
The sphere of light from which certain rays emanate shines beyond the human
being and its psychic, interior confines, even though, simultaneously, the rays seem
to spring from the very same direction of its own embedment. The rays flow from a
central source of spiritual light, a source that is connected to the human being. This
source prefigures the divine Spirit from whom the “spark” in human beings stems.
The individual experiences herself or himself here as a spiritual being, as a member of
the spiritual realm; she/he can distinguish very clearly her/his own spiritual qualities
from those of others. For example, only certain spiritual rays emanating from the
same species are able to awaken interior rays.
One can also experience a realm of feelings of the soul arising in one’s interiority,
feelings that surge from the “depths” of the heart, that flow from the “bottom” to the
“top” (for example, psycho-spiritual love for a person or an ideal, etc.). The flow of
feelings of the heart, or those that flow from the depths of the soul, becomes more
manifest when the I is abandoned to its object, a person, or a value that elicits the
feeling itself. But the moment the I turns away from the object to return to itself and its
feelings, as if in a “self-mirroring,” the I has already distanced itself from its source.
It is only from a higher level, for example, when one contemplates oneself from a
“God’s-eye” view as God’s creation that one does not run the risk of collapsing into

18 M. P. Pellegrino
narcissistic self-contemplation. It is only from this view that one can meaningfully
understand the commandment: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” The interior gaze
that grasps the source of feelings and its particularity, although it has been absorbed
by the feelings, can only perdure for a moment, much like a flash. In this flash the I
seizes its own basic essence as soul, as the warm flame of sentiment [Gefühlsflamme]
“colored” by individual characteristics.18 With other forms of embedment there arise
the self-lived experiences that refer to the vital, corporeal sphere.
If the I-center grasps the lived experiences that stem from the spiritual sphere or
from the realm of deep feelings, even without actually living in one single act of or in
the other spheres, although the I radiates within these spheres, the I-center continues
to rest in its fundamental essence. If the lived experience of the I-center becomes
habitual, then the body will be animated and transfigured by the forces of the soul
and spirit. Like Edith Stein, who deploys the image of the interior castle of Saint
Teresa of Avila, the decisive importance of one’s ultimate end arises for the existence
of the person by virtue of the “place” in which the I comes to permanently stand.
Telepathic Union
We have already discussed the various movements that arise from embeddedness
and that saturate the other’s psyche. Here, one finds lived experiences that, in their
origin, refer back to the interiority of the subject in question (A) and the other subject
(B). These lived experiences immediately, telepathically penetrate the embeddedness
of A through its I-center. Gerda Walther devotes much attention to the question of
telepathy, and she even discusses her own experience of it, which she closely studied.
She asserts that even those who do not believe in telepathy must account for the fact
that there exists much discussion about it, especially at the conceptual level. What
does telepathy mean and what are the essential traits of such a lived experience?
Although telepathy manifests a deep inherence of one individual in another, it does
not mean that subjects identify with one another, for the I that is entered into by the
other is conscious that the other does not belong to it.
Telepathy is distinguished from empathy, which Edith Stein eminently described
in her doctoral dissertation.19 Walther knew Stein’s text and cites it. In the lived
experience of empathy, I seize through the expressions of others (gestures, words,
etc.) the mind of the other: I hear what the other tells me, and through his sad face I
can grasp his pain or though his radiant eyes I can grasp his joy. All that stands before
me is transmitted through consciousness. All that empathy facilitates, the totality of
the other, from her corporeity to her personality, comes to light before my gaze.
The characteristic of telepathy, however, is that this very same experience described
above actualizes itself unbeknown to me, from “behind” (a tergo). The thoughts and

19 Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. by Waltraut Stein (Washington, DC: ICS Publi-
cations, 1989).
feelings of the other subject penetrate my very embeddedness, thereby affirming my

I-center. From her various studies of telepathy, Walther offers a rich discussion of
the particularities of telepathy. She maintains that telepathy is unique because the
living of the experience is carried out from the viewpoint of the other, at the very
same time that the other lives it, as if one were present in the same place with the
other, as if we were remembering it:
Simultaneously, in a clear representation, for example, in a dream, we see the interior of
something. I see what L, in this exact moment, experiences. I “see” L in his room [noticed
by me] lying on his couch, and I see him as he sees himself: I experience him lying on the
sofa, not as one observing him lying on the sofa, but as L lying on the sofa … I also see that
he has a book in his hand that has slid down onto the sofa, a book that he no longer reads.
Furthermore, I also grasp that he is smoking; I “smell” and “savor” in my interior the scent
of his cigarette and I am stimulated to smoke. The sense of everything, the things around
which the thoughts of L circulate, consists in the fact that he is reflecting on whether he
should write me …”20
Walther concludes that it was her intention to dismiss her experience as “nonsense”
(she had argued with this friend L and she did not expect him to write to her), but
surprisingly she did receive a letter from him because mutual friends asked him to
write to Walther.
Important here is the particular, interior psychic coloring of the lived experience,
the transmitted “aura,” which sometimes does not necessarily require the representa-
tion of the other person. From the beginning, the experience of telepathy is saturated
by this aura that stems from the transmitter. Walther returns to the image of the ancient
lamp, the image to which she compared the human person. The I-center is similar to
a wick that burns and floats upon a combustible liquid [Flüssigkeit], which in ancient
times was oil and which can be said to be like an embedment or the subconscious.
All is surrounded by a container (namely, the lamp), strictly understood, to which
the body is compared.21 By drawing upon reported experiences of telepathy, Walther
observes that we are each a different lamp with our own wicks that burn our own
flames (our I-centers). However, the oil in the lamps seems to be able to flow from
lamp to lamp, which means that each wick can be fed simultaneously by the oil of
another person. The two lamps remain distinct. Often, the oils may not mix, and even
in cases where the oils do mix, an individual wick may decide to withdraw from the
oil of the other and burn one’s own oil. Walther affirms, based on her studies, that one
is able to preserve one’s own freedom within the lived experience of telepathy insofar
as that one is able to shake oneself off or even take one’s own position vis-à-vis the
lived experience of the other. Telepathic union, then, is achieved only in embedment
and not in the I-center.22
20 Gerda Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik, 65–66.

20 M. P. Pellegrino
Communal Union
Telepathic union is to be distinguished from the union between members of a com-

munity. In her work on the ontology of community, Walther differentiates a commu-
nity from a societal relation. She warns, from the start, that the descriptor “social”
refers to an exclusively human community, though it is not the most intense form
of community, which is achieved when members have a “feeling of mutual belong-
ing” [Gefühl der Zusammengehörigkeit].23 Walther draws on the unpublished works
of her teacher Alexander Pfänder (namely, Psychologie der Gesinnungen and Psy-
chologie der Menschen), to develop her discussion of community. Gesinnung may be
described as the disposition to react in a certain way (love, benevolence, malevolence,
unfriendliness) to determined objects. Elicited by whatever object, it can produce in
a subject the feeling of union though which an individual tends to unite with an
object. For example, a warm, affirming psychic wave, emerging from the depths of
consciousness, penetrates a waking consciousness. It is as if the wave returned the
whole subject and its I, which is psychically pervaded by the wave, to its object (the
term object may be understood in a wide sense, and may include also persons among
its senses). The profiles of union are diverse: the subject may feel himself or herself
as equal to or superordinated or subordinated to the objects, and this may happen
until the object rests in the subject. This union is actual, and it proceeds from the
I-center, which tends intentionally to its object.
Walther also maintains the possibility of simply “growing together” [Zusam-
menwachsen], which is achieved without the I having to take a stance within one’s
subconscious or depths. How does this happen? One becomes aware of the union in
question at the very moment one begins to experience it. It is not something, however,
that is characterized as only achievable now in the instant; rather, the union man-
ifests itself as the reinforcement or confirmation of a union that is already present
but unconscious. It is only in a now that growing together can be constituted for
the experiencing subject.24 This kind of union is to be distinguished from an actual
union that has become habitual. When the actual union ceases the I no longer intends
its object; rather, other new moving, lived experiences enter and the I moves toward
their objects. The lived experience, so long as it perdures, is intentionally filled by its
object, but in the case of growing together the lived experience cannot stand alone
without a relation to the object. Hence, the “fabric” of the union is not ripped apart
and the earlier lived experience continues to vibrate within the flow of consciousness,
even though it may have retreated into the background behind the I-center. The lived
experience of union is awakened by some external occasion and it re-emerges in
waking consciousness, and not as the faint image of a memory. In habitual unions,
even though they may lie deep within the depths of an individual, within the embed-
ment of the I, the feeling of union is not spent. It continues to have a vital force that
23 Gerda Walther, Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften, 33–34.
24 Walther, Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften, 36–37.
flows out of its own inexhaustible source.25 The transformation of an actual union
into a habitual one is fundamental for the life of a community.
The subject may feel itself united to other human beings “that also … feel and
value the same thing.”26 This “also” constitutes, according to Walther, a category
fundamental for understanding community. The “also” does not only refer to external
ends, but also encompassing attitudes regarding existence. The notion of human
beings, who are “also” present in the embedment of the I wherever community exists,
does not simply arise from a single individual; rather, it surges from the unity of others
in the notion of human being, from a we. The we is not to be understood properly as
a subject, an I-center community. Even the lived experiences of community have to
come to fullness in the I-center of every individual. They flow from my embedment
to my I-center, from which they ultimately are actualized. In the lived experience of
union, one also seizes others within oneself, in one’s own embedment.
Walther adds that for the constitution of an authentic community the union must
be intentional on both sides; there must always be an exchange between individuals.
The tendency to union, which rises from the depths of the subject, finds adequation
or fulfillment in the depths of the other, in his or her spiritual essence. In communal
union, as opposed to telepathic union, the I has intentionally seized in itself others,
and the I feels one with them. Edith Stein, in her “Individual and Community,”27 also
carried out a phenomenological analysis of community from the perspective of the
individual who is a member of a community. The accounts of both philosophers may
be read in parallel to one another. Stein’s text was published in 1922 in Husserl’s
Jahrbuch, while Walther’s essay on social communities appeared in 1923 in the same
journal. Walther admits in a footnote28 that she was not able to consider Stein’s work,
but she remarks in opposition to Stein that community may also be viewed from the
“outside.” Yet, even if viewed from an external point of view, community arises from
the deepest “layer” of the subjects who are its members.
Mystical Union
The Phenomenology of Mysticism may be considered Gerda Walther’s main work.

In this text, one finds a consolidation of all her fields of interest. She affirms that she
wishes to follow as closely as possible the lived experience of mystics, ultimately
distilling the essential aspects of their experience, which she denotes as a living expe-
rience of “the real [leibhaftig] presence” of God. Although she privileges Christian
mystical experience, she sets the object of her study within a broad framework by
distinguishing the union with God from a spiritual force or a force of love. She also

27 Edith Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, trans. by Mary Catharine Baseheart
and Marianne Sawicki (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2000).

28 Gerda Walther, Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften, 17.
22 M. P. Pellegrino
distinguishes between communion with God, God as infinite spiritual person, or the
God of interpersonal relations.
The reference to the lived body and all that is given as embodied allows one
to enter into a dimension in which all is living. This dimension allows Walther to
assert that the Eucharistic union, understood as the living presence of Christ, may
be connected with mystical lived experiences. The discussion of mysticism in her
book is preceded by a philosophical anthropology that seeks to uncover and describe
the lived experiences that arise from the foundation or essence of the human person,
especially those stemming from the individual’s personal core.
Walther claims that there are two descriptors that grasp the essence of the indi-
vidual (namely, abandonment and desolation—Verlassenheit). In these two states
the I can be said to be enclosing itself in its own constitutive emptiness, ultimately
comporting itself as the personification of a vicious circle,29 thereby either falling
prey to nonsense or tending to something else. The I can be seen to be entering
the dimension constitutive of the relation between human and divine persons. The I
opens itself up to the divine. Sometimes, this mystical experience is referred to as a
kind of madness or folly; it is not described as a psychic state, yet it is also described
as the metaphysical possibility of losing oneself. The latter occurs when one remains
wrapped up in one’s being-alone-with-one’s I, without any relation to the fullness of
being of the divine essence. Walther views this being trapped in the immanence of
the I as diabolical or Satanic.30
Walther will often describe her own personal mystical experiences, drawing out
what is of universal value in them. The state of abandonment is described as wakeful.
Here, the I lives with the highest concentration. Echoing her past investigations,
Walther affirms that the I-center is free to remain in contact with the deep sources of
lived experience, but she can also distance herself from them. The I-center is like the
“eye” (that is, the actualizing point of consciousness not only for embedment—as in
telepathic experiences—but also for the basic body–psyche–spirit human essence,
without which the I would be “blind”).
The I, perhaps because of a crisis that afflicts a person’s existence (Walther tells
of such a crisis while returning on the train to Freiburg after visiting her gravely ill
father), seems to unconsciously lapse onto itself in its inability to grasp any content, be
it of the external world or from within. The I experiences itself as being completely
“empty,” as being nothing but an I. The I knows, but all it knows is itself and its
inconsolable state; it is as if the I has been “blocked” from the external world and its
values, as well as the I’s own psycho-spiritual world and its own self and embedment.
A dark abyss appears before the I, an abyss into which it may fall. The I here has
neither world nor soul nor embedment nor a foundational essence. The I has no life,
objects, and goals from which certain possibilities and forces may arise. The I has
contracted into itself with the greatest tension and intensity.31 This solitary life is
29 “Der wie ein personifizierter circulus vitiosus sich verhält …” Gerda Walther, Phänomenologie
der Mystik, 140.

31 Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik.
not bearable for the human being: either the individual lapses into the emptiness
or she/he desperately tends toward something of the highest value that cannot be
degraded:
The I only knows one thing: Its something else [Es] must be totally different than what it has
up until now known and experienced. This is what the I feels … It does not know where its
something else is and whether it is true. With imperturbability, calmness, and cold and clear
certainty, it knows in a completely determined way one thing: The I will lapse into ruin and
wants to do so, if it does not find something else. This is the case because otherwise nothing
from within or outside the I could lead it to want to continue to exist.32
In this description, Walther does not include a specific religious context. The
something else toward which the I tends, at this point in her work, has neither name
nor identity. Its coming to be is free and is understood to be a grace. Here, the source
moments of religious consciousness emerge: the desire for a fullness that cannot be
obtained by oneself, the waiting for a freely given event that blocks one from lapsing
into the void.
In an immeasurable interior distance and beyond all that from which the I is
blocked, something appears, as a sea of light and color that envelops the I and whose
radiance fills the heart, soul, spirit, and the self. It is only in this sea that I rests peace-
fully, full of gratitude because that something or Es has arrived. The I finds itself now
abandoned over to trust; the abandonment is different than desolation. If, previously,
all had contracted into an unextended I-point, now there is an opening, a dilation that
opens up onto the infinity of everything. Here, the I “sees” its fundamental essence
and it enters again into it; it sees and feels itself with the “eye” and “heart” of God.
The I becomes open to the possibility of seeing all creatures in this light. Yet, the I is
not annihilated within this sea of light and color. Only insofar as it was born or in that
it was never in the union described above, although it has received the foundational
essence of body–psyche–spirit and a self while being placed in the world, thereby
having for itself a lived history, can the I be aware of all that it has in the living
experience of the divine. Therefore, in mystical union, in the pure abandonment of
love, even though the subject may be only a contemplating I, the I is never identical
with its object (namely, God).
The mystical experience cannot be confused with the telepathic one. One need
only think here of the incommensurable distance of that something (Es) and the
tension of the I as it awaits it, not knowing whether it will die or become mad if this
something does not come.33 In the last chapters of the Phenomenology of Mysticism
the divine essence is described as God, Infinite Spiritual Person, and as a being in
communion with It. Salvation comes, then, from the Person of God, who can bring
the I home, ultimately reinserting it into the totality of the I’s own aspects. The Person
of God can truly heal the human being from what is diabolical, from the complete
estrangement from one’s own self.
The two results of Walther’s analysis of desolation recall, on the one hand, the
metaphysical dependence of the individual on the foundation of his or her essence

24 M. P. Pellegrino
and, on the other hand, the constitutive freedom of the I, understood as a center of
willing and choice. It seems to me that Walther wishes here to condense in a powerful
way (because she does not avoid the possibility of a tragic result) the sense of things,
even the abysmal sense, as they unfold in the flow of lived experience. In this flow,
she uncovers our being as unique and responsible persons capable of actualizing our
own ends in a united, communal way, with others and with the Other.
Marina Pia Pellegrino holds a laurea in Philosophy and has taught philosophy and pedagogy in
secondary schools. She has also taught courses on Edith Stein’s philosophy for Catholic teach-
ers and the Diocese of Turin. She collaborates with the Italian Center for Phenomenological
Research and sits on the Executive Committee of the International Research Area Dedicated to
Edith Stein and Contemporary Philosophy. She has published various papers on philosophy and
Gerda Walther, including L’essere umano e la sua vita interiore. Linee di fenomenologia della
mistica in Gerda Walther [The Human Being and Its Interior Life: Outline for a Phenomenology
of Mysticism in Gerda Walther] (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2007). Along with Angela
Ales Bello, she is the co-editor of the book Edith Stein–Gerda Walther. Incontri possibili. Empa-
tia, telepatia, comunità, mistica [Edith Stein and Gerda Walther: Possible Encounters—Empathy,
Community, Mysticism] (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2007).
Part II
Social Ontology and the Self
Social Acts and Communities: Walther
Between Husserl and Reinach
Alessandro Salice and Genki Uemura
Abstract The chapter contextualizes and reconstructs Walther’s theory of social

acts. In her view a given act qualifies as social if it is performed in the name of
or on behalf of a community. Interestingly, Walther’s understanding of that notion
is patently at odds with the idea of a social act originally propounded by Reinach.
According to Reinach, an act is social if it “addresses” other persons and if it, for its
success, requires them to grasp it. We claim that to explain Walther’s reconfiguration
of this concept, one has to look into the use that Husserl makes of it. Husserl adopts
this idea from Reinach to tackle a problem that is not discussed by the latter. This
is the problem of how communities, by means of social acts, are “constituted” in
consciousness. Walther shares with Husserl the concern about the constitution of
communities and her radical revision of Reinach’s idea is presented as an attempt to
offer an alternative solution to Husserl’s problem.
Keywords Social act · Walther · Reinach · Husserl · Constitution
Introduction
It is almost a truism to claim that the mind is one of the core topics—if not the
core topic—of research in phenomenology. Moreover, exploring the mind from a
phenomenological perspective is to a great extent an investigation into the structures
of experiences lived through by a singular subject. Among other results, the phe-
nomenological approach to the mind has produced detailed descriptions of different
The authors equally contributed to this chapter. Uemura’s research was supported by the Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science (KAKENHI, Project No. 26770014).
A. Salice (B)
University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
e-mail: alessandro.salice@ucc.ie
G. Uemura
Okayama University, Okayama, Japan
e-mail: uemurag@okayama-u.ac.jp

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_3
28 A. Salice and G. Uemura
kinds of experiences. One particularly important description concerns the distinction

between what we suggest labeling “infra-personal” and “social” experiences.
Many of a subject’s experiences can be qualified as infra-personal. Among others,
perceptions, beliefs, acts of imaginations, and (at least, some kinds of) emotions are
infra-personal in the sense that they may involve, but do not necessarily require, the
existence of other subjects. By contrast, and as a first approximation of a charac-
terization, experiences of the social kind necessarily require the existence of other
subjects in one way or the other (that is, they require the subject to interact with others
in a social environment). For instance, issuing an order always involves issuing an
order to somebody. And declaring war always involves declaring war on behalf of a
nation. The main question of this chapter concerns the essential structure of social
experiences: How to understand, precisely, the claim that these experiences require
the subject to interact with others in a social environment?
This chapter reconstructs and scrutinizes the discussion about social experiences
in early phenomenology. To be more precise, the chapter is concerned with a specific
class of social experiences (namely, social acts), and with two arguably irreconcilable
positions thereof, which were developed by two early phenomenologists. The first
position, advocated by Adolf Reinach, holds that what characterizes an act as social
is the peculiar way in which this act is addressed to another person or other persons
(and hence has “addressee(s)”). The second position, defended by Gerda Walther,
maintains that, for an act to qualify as social, this act must stand in the right relation
with a community: The act must be performed in the name of or on behalf of a
community. Walther, who presents her view in an article of 1923, was certainly
aware of Reinach’s theory, which leads to the question as to why she reconfigures
Reinach’s notion in such a radical way. We claim that her revision of Reinach’s
position depends on (and is mediated by) Husserl’s understanding of (Reinach’s
notion of) social acts.
The chapter is organized as follows. In section “Reinach’s Conception of Social
Acts (and Walther’s Departure from It)” we introduce Reinach’s theory of social
acts by drawing a parallel with what have been called “speech acts” in Ordinary
Language Philosophy. After this, we briefly show how Walther’s view of social acts
conflicts with Reinach’s. In section “Husserl on the Constitutive Function of Social
Acts” we investigate how Reinach’s ideas have been adopted by Husserl to address
a problem that was not originally discussed by Reinach. This is the problem of how
communities are given or “constituted” in consciousness. In section “Walther on
Social Acts” we turn to Walther to highlight that she shares with Husserl the concern
about the constitution of communities and that her original and radical revision of
Reinach’s notion of a social act is an attempt to offer a different and alternative
solution to Husserl’s problem.
Reinach’s Conception of Social Acts (and Walther’s

Departure from It)
Reinach developed his theory of social acts between 1911 and 1913, and he formu-
lated it succinctly in his monograph titled A priori Foundations of the Civil Law. This
theory shows many significant analogies with the notion of a speech act developed
Social Acts and Communities: Walther Between Husserl and Reinach 29
by Austin in the 1950s (and later refined by Searle and others). Notoriously, these
analogies have motivated several commentators to suggest that Reinach should be
credited with discovering the notion of a speech act (see Mulligan 1987; Smith 1990).
This chapter’s primary interest does not lie in comparing Reinach’s and Austin’s
views (which is a task that has been taken on by others; see Crosby 1990; Mulligan
1987), yet we think that such a comparison may be relevant for the topic at stake as it
may enable us to uncover an important aspect of Reinach’s theory that is core to the
phenomenological understanding of social acts, but which is not appreciated in the
Oxonian approach to speech acts. The main difference between these two theories,
roughly, is this: Whereas Austin (and those working in his tradition) considers speech
acts to be a class of ritual, ceremonial, or conventional actions, Reinach describes
social acts as intentional experiences of a particular kind.
One way to identify the similarities between these two theories is by point-
ing to the idea that Reinach and Austin concur in claiming that successfully per-
formed social/speech acts fulfill at least three conditions. We call these conditions
the “preparatory,” the “sincerity,” and the “essential” conditions (to paraphrase John
Searle’s classical terminology introduced in 1969; see also Salice 2015).
The first condition is qualified as “preparatory,” for the entire act is miscarried
if that condition is not aptly fulfilled. To be successfully performed, all social acts
must “secure uptake” in their addresses (Austin 2011: 117) or, in Reinach’s terms,
they must “be heard” (vernommen) by the addresses. All and only those acts that
necessarily are in need of being heard (that exemplify the property of being in need
of being heard—Vernehmungsbedürftigkeit) qualify as social (Reinach 2012: 18ff.).
A social act performed between two or more human beings is “heard,” according
to Reinach, when three things occur: First, the linguistic utterance is acoustically or
visually perceived by the act’s addressee; second, the addressee understands the con-
tent of the utterance; and, finally, the addressee understands the type of the act—this
is its “quality,” in Husserl’s terminology of the Logical Investigations, or its “mode”;
see Crane (2001) (that is, she understands whether a given utterance is a promise, an
order, etc.). Puzzlingly, however, Reinach believes that this last condition does not
apply to the social act of informing somebody about something (Reinach 2012: 21).
Although Reinach argues that social acts can also be performed in non-linguistic
communication (for example, in mien and gestures; Reinach 2012: 20), it is the
linguistic dimension that most clearly characterizes social acts. Indeed, all these acts
have what could be called a locutionary component (in Austin’s sense, see 2011:
94ff): in performing a social act the subject by necessity also performs a so-called
“act of meaning something” (Meinen, Meinensakt). Reinach describes this act as
consisting in the use of syntactically organized strings of words that belong to the
vocabulary of a language, refer to entities, and predicate something of these entities
(Reinach 1989a: 102ff., 127ff.). In social acts (but only in social acts), the act of
meaning something is always verbalized or uttered, which makes Meinen the visible
“body” of the act (Reinach 2012: 20).
In addition to a body, social acts also have a “soul.” Indeed, every social act
presupposes or is founded (fundiert) upon a further mental state that represents the
“sincerity condition” of that very act. This further state, Reinach argues, is an inner
or non-social intentional experience: Insofar as it is not social, this experience is not
in need of being heard and, insofar as it is intentional, it has an intentional correlate,
which is said to coincide with the correlate of the act of meaning something mentioned
above (Reinach 2012: 20). For example, if Jim informs Joel that p, then Jim’s act
of informing is constituted by an act of meaning that p and by a conviction that p.
Analogously, the promise to ϕ is constituted by the act of willing or intending to ϕ
and, again, by the act of meaning ϕ. If the social act merely pretends to be founded by
an inner act of a given type, while in reality it is not, it experiences a “modification”
(that is, the act is insincere). For instance, if Jim merely pretends to be convinced that
p is the case, then Jim is not informing Joel about p, he is belying him; analogously,
a promise that lacks the will to act is not a promise, but the deceptive modification of
a promise (Reinach 2012: 22). While describing several other ways in which social
acts can be modified, he identifies the present modification as the origin of social
hypocrisy (Reinach 2012: 22; see Austin’s notion of insincerity, 2011: 39ff).
The last condition that both Reinach and Austin delineate for a social act to
be successful concerns the consequences of these acts. In fact, social acts have a
point, which is to generate effects of a peculiar sort. These are what Austin calls
the illocutionary consequences or “effects” of a speech act (2011: 114ff). What are
these effects or consequences? They can be illustrated most clearly by looking at
the social act par excellence (namely, the promise). If , say, Jim’s promise to Joel is
successful in the sense that it meets the preparatory and the sincerity conditions, then
the promise has brought about Jim’s commitment to realize the content of his promise
and Joel’s claim that Jim does so. But then, what are claims and commitments? They
are certainly not material objects like tables and trees, but they are not mental objects
like beliefs or desires either, as they exist even if their bearers sleep or are unconscious.
Furthermore, they are not abstract objects like numbers or propositions, since such
objects are atemporal, whereas the effects of a social act, as they are brought to
existence by this very act, start to exist at a given time t and (potentially) disappear
at a given time t (Reinach 2012: 14ff.). Claims and commitments, hence, belong
to a sui generis ontological category, they are social (or perhaps, more precisely,
institutional) objects (see Salice 2013).
If the reconstruction offered so far is on the right track, then there are good reasons
for thinking that Reinach and Austin are trying to conceptually model the very same
phenomena. But this is not to say that there are no important differences between
these accounts, and one of them is particularly relevant for our purposes. Austin is
adamant in describing speech acts as “conventional, ceremonial or ritual actions.” To
put this differently, speech acts belong to a specific class of actions whose existence
is premised on an accepted convention. We will soon come back to this point, but
it is important to highlight one consequence of this understanding already now: In
the case in which either there is no convention or the agent does not respect the
convention, then the action (that is, the speech act) has literally not taken place:
“lots of things have been done […] but we shall not have done the purported act
[…]” (Austin 2011: 17). For example, if Jim says to Joel, “I promise to…,” but Joel
does not understand Jim, then, literally, no promise has occurred. In other words, to
promise is to commit oneself to do something for somebody else. If Jim were to be

asked whether he has promised something to Joel, he would reply that no promise
has been made. In a sense, he has tried to promise, but the action was not performed.
Reinach’s understanding of a social act is completely different: A social act is
an experience (Erlebnis), that instantiates an essence. We have already pointed to
some essential properties of social acts: First and foremost, social acts are in need
of being heard. Moreover, it is because they are in need of being heard that they
must be announced, for the addressee must be put in a position to understand the
act (in the many senses of the term “understanding” described above). This is why
they consist of a locutionary component (Meinen), which is accompanied by an inner
experience. But there are other essential features: What distinguishes social acts from
other classes of intentional experiences (like beliefs or emotions) is their spontaneity
(Spontaneität). The subject of a social act deliberately performs her act (that is, she
determines times and forms of her act), whereas this is not the case for beliefs or
emotions. If my eyes move upon an artwork, my belief that I face an artwork or my
emotions of enjoyment toward the artwork are not spontaneous in any comparable
sense.
But now let us go back to our previous example: Jim utters a certain sentence, “I
promise that…,” but Joel does not understand him. In Reinach’s view an experience
has occurred. This is an experience that is intentional, spontaneous, and in need of
being heard, which presupposes an intention and an act of meaning something. Hence,
given that all essential properties of a promise are exemplified by the experience, Jim’s
experience does qualify as a promise, contrary to what Austin claims. In fact, Reinach
writes: “If we put ourselves in the position of the promisor, we see that a genuine
promise can be performed and expressed, yet without reaching the subject to whom it
is directed” (2012: 28). So, were Jim to be asked whether he has promised something
to Joel, then he—again, in Reinach’s view—would not have to reply that he tried
to promise, but rather that he indeed promised something, although his promise was
not successful.
To elaborate, one could argue that, in Reinach’s view, what makes a given expe-
rience a social act, is not primarily the fact that this act is premised on a social
convention, but that it is the peculiar way in which the other is addressed by the
subject. To further expand on this idea, Reinach seems to develop what could be
characterized as an “internalistic” account of social acts: In principle, a brain in a
vat, to use Putnam’s notorious example, would be able to perform all sorts of social
acts as long as the brain is able to adopt the peculiar mental stance toward the other
that characterizes social acts.
But, then, is not Reinach’s understanding of an experience’s sociality simply too
minimal? How can a solipsistic mind be in a position to have social experiences?
Within phenomenology, Reinach is not alone in embracing this form of internalism
about social acts (for example, Scheler, too, seems to propound a similar view;
Scheler 1954: 511). Now, pointing to this difficulty is not to mean that there are no
conceptual resources in those accounts that may be able to dissolve this tension (as
a matter of fact, we think such resources do exist). Yet, we suggest that one way to
understand Walther’s characterization of social acts can be seen as a reaction against
that problem and as an attempt to fix what makes a given act a social act without
falling prey to Reinach’s internalism.
As we will see in sections “Husserl on the Constitutive Function of Social Acts
and Walther on Social Acts”, drawing on unpublished lectures and manuscripts of
Alexander Pfänder, her teacher in Munich, Walther claims that social acts are charac-
terized in terms of their being oriented toward [sich richten auf ] the social community
and that these acts are originated in the individual’s “social self” [soziales Selbst]
(see Walther 1923: 103). In her opinion, what deserves the name of “social acts”
in the authentic (or, in her own words, “pregnant”) sense are experiences that are
performed “in the name of” or “on behalf [Sinn] of” the community (see Walther
1923: 104).
Reinach would strongly disagree with Walther’s proposal. From his standpoint,
her conception of social acts is partly too narrow, but partly also too broad. On the one
hand, Walther’s conception is too narrow because it captures only a certain subclass
of social acts. Reinach would admit that an act of, say, promising can be performed in
the name of or on behalf of a community, but he would take it only as a modified form
of social acts (Reinach 2012: 25),1 which are distinguished from experiences of non-
social types precisely by the necessity of being heard (Vernehmungsbedürftigkeit).
On the other hand, Walther’s conception of social acts appears too broad because it
encompasses experiences that are not social by Reinach’s definition: On Walther’s
account, an experience may be social even if it lacks the necessity of being heard
(for example, an emotion of fear felt “in the name of” a community would qualify
as social, in Walther’s view, although fear certainly does not require to be heard).
But, then, what are Walther’s reasons for conceiving of social acts in such a way?
Unfortunately, she does not elaborate on her reasons for departing from Reinach’s
positions. Moreover, if one is to understand how she arrives at her notion of social
acts, these need to be reconstructed from the textual evidence available. The starting
point of our reconstruction is the fact that she does not refer only to Reinach, but also
to Husserl when she articulates her conception of social acts (see Walther 1923: 91,
103). Thus, section “Husserl on the Constitutive Function of Social Acts” is devoted
to Husserl’s understanding of social acts and in section “Walther on Social Acts”
we explore how Walther adopts and transforms that notion. To put it negatively,
we will see that Walther’s conception of social acts is distorted by the conception
of those acts advocated by Husserl. In more positive terms, we will highlight that
Walther produces an original account of social acts based on, but also substantially
transforming, Reinach’s and Husserl’s theories.
1 To the best of our knowledge, Reinach only mentions the possibility of social acts performed in
the name of other individuals, but not of groups. Yet, this possibility is essential for Edith Stein to
develop a theory of state (on the basis of Reinach’s theory see Gombocz and Salice 2006): “The
state requires one person or a group of persons, to make itself audible [um sich vernehmlich zu
machen], and a domain of persons to be heard and to come to existence. The state can perform acts
only if persons who represent [vertreten] it perform those acts on its behalf [für ihn]” (Stein 1922:
313, our translation).
Husserl on the Constitutive Function of Social Acts
In her 1923 piece on social community Walther reports that Husserl discussed social
acts in his Nature and Spirit [Natur und Geist] lectures, which she attended in 1919
(see Walther 1923: 91).2 These lectures, which are now available in the Husserliana
Materialien Series, help us to appreciate the important role played by Husserl in
Walther’s own reception of Reinach’s idea of social acts. Husserl’s description of
social acts in those lectures belongs to his phenomenological analysis of community,
and our interest in Husserl’s analysis is limited to those parts of his theory that are
relevant to Walther.3
According to Husserl, social communities, understood as bonds of subjects (Sub-
jektverbänden), are different from mere aggregates of individuals because of the
specific interrelation among the members of those communities. In his own words:
The “relation” [Verbindung] is a “spiritual” one, this is an achievement [Leistung], which
constitutes itself through the mutual relation [Wechselbeziehung] of subjects in subjective
acts [Subjektakten] and which preserves and, possibly, reproduces itself in the exchange
among deliberating and evaluating subjects (Husserl 2002: 133, our translation).
Social acts, in Husserl’s understanding, are the subjective acts mentioned in the
quotation. In fact, he continues by stating:
Regarding the acts, which here function as originally meaning-grounding and which therefore
are originally constitutive for all sociality, one can indicate already here that they belong to
a peculiar group of I-acts [Ichakten], which are called “social I-acts.” These are acts, which
so to say have an addressee, in which an I refers to one or several other I-subjects, possibly
including oneself, and from which the variations of the personal pronouns (you, he, we, they,
etc.) gain their sense (Husserl 2002: 134, our translation and emphasis).
It seems clear that, here, Husserl is appropriating Reinach’s conception of social

acts as experiences in need of being heard.4 However, it is crucial to note that Husserl
is introducing this notion to deal with a problem that is not discussed by Reinach.
According to Husserl, social acts are constitutive for all sociality and in particular
for communities. This suggests that the discussion of social acts is part and parcel of
his project of a constitutive phenomenology of sociality, which he already outlined
in the first volume of Ideen (1913):
These communities, although essentially founded in mental realities that are themselves
founded in physical realities, prove to be new kinds of objects of a higher order. It is generally
apparent that there are various kinds of objects that defy any psychologistic and naturalistic
re-interpretation. Examples of these include every kind of object of value and practical
2 These lectures were followed by Saturday discussions, which Walther also attended. See Schuh-
mann 1977: 234–235.
3 For more on Husserl’s discussions of Nature and Spirit in his 1919 lectures and elsewhere see
Melle 1996.
4 Husserl holds the same idea in his Cartesianische Meditationen (Husserl 1950: 159–160) and Ideen
II (Husserl 1952/1969: 194), in both of which he claims that sociality is constituted in social acts (see
below). For further reading on Husserl’s notion of social acts and their role in his phenomenology
of sociality see also Perreau 2013: 100–107.
object, as well as all the concrete creations of culture that determine our current life as hard
actualities, such as, for example, state, law, custom, church, and so forth. All these sorts of
objectiveness must be described, just as they are given, in terms of their basic kinds and in
their successive orders, and the problems of constitution for them must be posed and solved
(Husserl 1913a, b: 318–319, our italics).
But, then, a question emerges: What does it mean that the bond among the mem-
bers of a community is constituted in social acts? Moreover, and more generally, what
is the meaning of the term “constitution” as it is used by Husserl in the foregoing
quotation? Despite the legitimacy of this last question, two main reasons motivate us
not to address it in the present chapter. First, the notion of constitution is a contentious
issue in Husserl scholarship. Second, and more importantly for us, what is needed
in the present context is not to reconstruct Husserl’s constitutive phenomenology as
such, but rather to reconstruct how Walther employs it in her work on social commu-
nities. For this purpose, it may suffice to give a minimal characterization of Husserl’s
notion of constitution, which we expect will not generate any exegetical controversy
and which, crucially for our purposes, Walther agrees with and adopts in her work.
In the Logical Investigations, Husserl uses the phrase “to be constituted” [sich
konstituiren] to capture the idea that “the objects of which we are ‘conscious’ are
not simply in consciousness as in a box, so that they can merely be found in it and
grasped in it” (Husserl 1913b: 165 [tr. vol. 2, 275], translation modified). According
to him, “[objects] are first constituted as being what they are for us, and as what
they count as for us, in various forms of objective consciousness” (Husserl 1913b:
166 [tr. vol. 2, 275], translation modified). His contention is that for any object there
are various “forms” in accordance with which the object is given to consciousness.
Here, for an object to be constituted is nothing over and above for this object to be
given in consciousness in certain ways. In Ideas I Husserl takes on this idea with
some important additions:
Each objective region is constituted in accordance with consciousness. Insofar as it is actual,
an object determined by the regional genus has, as such, its way of being perceivable, clearly
or dimly presentable, thinkable, demonstrable in general—all prefigured a priori (Husserl
1913a: 309, translation modified, our italics).
Any object has its own ways of givenness and—this is the crucial point—those
ways are determined a priori by the ontological region to which the object belongs.
Since, phenomenologically, the a priori can be defined in terms of necessity and
possibility that hold in virtue of the essence of something (see Husserl 1913b: 236),
it is possible to rephrase his idea as follows: The ways in which the object is given
in various forms or manners are determined by its essence. For instance, physical
objects (or “things” [Dinge]) cannot be given in perceptual experience in a totally
arbitrary manner because of some constraint that holds necessarily in virtue of the
essence of those objects; since they are by their essence spatial, they are perceived
only through adumbrations [Abschattungen].
This minimal notion of constitution should suffice to understand the primary
objective of Husserl’s constitutive analysis: Constitutive analysis aims at a phe-
nomenological description of the most general manners in which objects of a various
sort are given in consciousness by virtue of their essences. To apply all this to our
topic: Communities are constituted in social acts in the sense that they are given
to their members in social acts. To put this differently, subjects gain access to the
communities they belong to by means of the social acts they perform. For instance,
when Sam promises to ϕ to Pam, the I–thou community formed by Sam and Pam is
given to Sam.
Against this background, it becomes possible to appreciate that Husserl’s discus-
sion of social acts and their relation to communities is closely associated with his
idea of constitution. This makes a sharp contrast between him and Reinach, who
never engaged in constitutive analysis of communities.5 As a consequence, one may
claim that Husserl somehow distorts Reinach’s notion of social acts and, as we will
see in section “Walther on Social Acts”, the same distortion can also be found behind
Walther’s taking issue with Reinach. Indeed, her reception of the notion of social acts
is mediated by Husserl. This does not mean, however, that she accepts everything
Husserl maintains about social acts and their constitutive function; rather, her own
conception of social acts aims at overcoming an important limitation in Husserl’s
discussion of these issues. In our opinion the limitation Walther faces is this: In the
Natur und Geist lectures, Husserl deals only with the givenness of a community to
an insider or to a group member of that community. To put it differently, he leaves
untouched the following questions: How can the community be given to an outsider
of the community? (How) is it possible for a community to be given to a subject
regardless of whether she is an insider or outsider of the community? It is in attempt-
ing to answer these questions that Walther adopts her conception of social acts, as
we argue in what follows.
Walther on Social Acts
As mentioned above, Walther adopts Husserl’s notion of constitution in her “Zur

Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften.” In the opening part of this paper she draws
a distinction between ontology and phenomenology (see Walther 1923: 1). While
ontology investigates the essence of objects of any sort, phenomenology investigates
the way in which those objects are given, appearing, and apprehended [erkannt]
in (pure) consciousness in accordance with the essence of those objects. To put it
differently, the aim of phenomenology is to discover the way of givenness [Gegeben-
heitsweise] of an object, which is predetermined or “prescribed” [vorschreiben] by
the essence of that object:
5 Ina posthumously published manuscript of his from 1911, Reinach writes that “social relations
are constituted by social acts” (Reinach 1989b: 360). However, as the phrase “are constituted by
[durch]” shows, he is obviously not operating with the Husserlian concept of constitution. His
contention here is rather that social relations (such as promissory claims and commitments) are
produced or brought into existence by social acts. In other words, the term “constitution” here should
be understood as meaning what Walther calls ontological constitution (see section “Conclusion”).
This interpretation is further corroborated by the fact that in his lectures in 1913 Reinach talks about
the constitution of an object [Gegenstandskonstitution] when he deals with ontology or theory of
objects [Gegenstandstheorie] as opposed to the investigation into the givenness of objects (see
Reinach 1989c: 394).
For all fundamental kinds and regions of objectivities, constitutive phenomenology has to
investigate the construction [Aufbau] of the object (as this is prescribed to consciousness
by the sense and essence of the object) in continuous series of experiences (relations of
motivations), which are related to each other by means of the same intentional sense, i.e.,
[it has to investigate] the “constitution” of the object in consciousness as prescribed by
its essence (and this is to be confounded neither with the ontological constitution of an
object respectively of its essence in its essential traits, nor with the real constitution of a real
individual in its real properties) (Walther 1923: 10, our translation and emphasis).
Accordingly, “constitution of an object” points to a specific process or, in her

own words, to a “motivational connection” [Zusammenhang der Motivation] which
is prescribed by the essence of the object and by means of which the object is
given in consciousness. In this way Walther follows Husserl’s conception of consti-
tution in its minimal sense, as formulated above. However, what is remarkable about
this quotation is that she also explicitly distinguishes constitution in this minimally
Husserlian sense from what she labels “ontological constitution.” Interestingly, this
latter notion of constitution has nothing to do with how objects are given to us; rather,
it concerns the structure of these objects as such (Walther 1923: 146). Consequently,
in Walther’s view, investigating communities boils down to pursuing a twofold task:
It is the investigation of how communities are phenomenologically constituted, but
also it is to investigate how they are ontologically constituted. It is to these two
different tasks that we now turn our attention.
The Ontological Constitution of Communities
Let us start with Walther’s ontology of communities. Here, the question is: What
is the ontological constitution of communities? Or, what is the essential structural
feature that makes communities different from mere aggregates of more than one
(human) person? According to her, neither external features shared by members of
a community (such as having the same tattoos) nor physical features shared by the
members (such as being taller than 170 cm) can be the decisive factor (Walther
1923: 19–20). Rather, she contends that the key to the community lies in the mental
and spiritual life of each individual. More precisely, a community emerges when
several individuals undergo an affective experience called “inner unification” [innere
Einigung]. Consider the following example:
[…] just take a number of randomly picked workers from Slovakia, Poland, Italy, etc., who
are all employed on a construction site. They do not understand one another’s language, they
do not know each other, they have never had anything to do with each other before—they just
want to earn their living and have accidentally been hired by the same construction company.
Now, for instance, they build a wall, some of them take the bricks, others pass them on to
someone else and give them to the brick layers, who apply the mortar and place the bricks
one on top of the other. […] We have here a number of persons, who are aware of each
other and who, in their behavior, are mutually [in Wechselwirkung] directed to each other
[…]. Furthermore, at one level of their mental life, they are directed to the same intentional
object in one unity of sense [in einer Sinneinheit]: […] the entire construction. A partially
homogeneous mental–spiritual life, pervaded by one unity of sense and governed by the
same intentional object (the construction and the earning of each his own living by working
on that construction), results from this. […] Do we have here a community? (Walther 1923:
31, our translation).
Walther responds negatively to this question (Walther 1923: 31–33): It is true

that in her example each worker has an intention of the same kind. It is also true
that the workers, to a certain extent, know each other and further that they interact
together. But still, they do not form a community. Following Fernand Tönnies and
Franklin Henry Giddings, she claims that the essence of communities as opposed to
societies [Gesellschaften] lies in “inner bond” [innere Verbundenheit], “feeling of
togetherness” [Gefühl der Zusammengehörigkeit], or “inner unification” (see Walther
1923: 33).
By using these expressions, Walther means to draw our attention to something that
subjects experience as bond, togetherness, or unification. That is why she qualifies
the bond and unification at stake here as inner. In what follows, to denote that
experience, we conform to her terminology by using only “inner unification” or
simply “unification” (except when we quote her own words).
But what is unification? We learn from Walther that this is not a cognitive act
(like a state of knowledge or a judgment), but rather ought to be described as a sort
of feeling or emotion [Gefühl]. In fact, one can feel the emotional experience of
unification even in the absence of cognitive experiences (one can feel unified with
a community without judging or knowing that one is a member of a community;
see Walther 1923: 34). She further characterizes unification as a positive emotion
in which the “contour” [Kontur] of its subject and object is “altered” [verändert]
(see Walther 1923: 34–35). Walther adopts the idea of the altered contour from
Pfänder, who illustrates it by means of the following example:
The motherly I, while preserving its own contours, absorbs [aufsaugen] the filial I more or
less completely in itself; [the motherly I] coalesces [einschmelzen] it into its more extensive
[umfänglicheres] self by destroying the contours and the existence [Eigendasein] [of the filial
I]. The child is now no longer gently, internally, lovingly embraced [umfangen], but mentally
engulfed [veschlungen] more or less entirely by the mother (Pfänder 1913: 380–381, our
translation).
This example is about an extreme or even pathological case of unification,6 but it

serves to highlight the following point: Unification transforms its subject (the mother
in the example) by enabling her to have another subject (her child) in herself , but the
subject in this case does not cease to be an individual subject. Furthermore, subjects
who undergo that particular transformation acquire a “social self.” Walther, who
operates with the notion of social self in her own investigations, reports that Pfänder
discusses the idea of social self in unpublished lectures and manuscripts (however,
6 Not all unifications are pathological, though. See “[The human soul] is absolutely not an isolated
creature [Wesen], it is no monad, but from its beginning it is essentially a group member [Gliedwesen]
(that is, it lies in essence to stay in intentional contact of unification with other creatures)” (Pfänder
1933: 225, our translation). For Pfänder’s discussion of unification and Walther’s adaptation of it
see also Caminada 2014 (though note that Einigung is translated as “joining” in Caminada’s paper).
we do not have access to that material and thus we cannot ascertain how Pfänder
develops this idea).
Walther’s idea of social self is closely related to the phenomenon of habitual uni-
fication. Unlike occurrent [aktuell] unification, habitual unification remains unex-
perienced unless it is actualized in some way or other (see Walther 1923: 38–44).
According to Walther, “habitual unifications of all kinds are almost more important
for the foundation of communities and for the communal life than the episodic [ein-
malig] occurrent [unifications], which immediately again disappears” (Walther 1923:
48, our translation). Habitual unification captures one important aspect of the rela-
tionship between a community and its members: Communities, for their existence,
do depend on their members internally unifying, but it would be too demanding to
impose on this form of unification the condition to be necessarily of an occurrent kind.
For instance, a family persists even when all family members fall into dreamless sleep
and thus do not have any occurrent experience in the first place. Introducing habitual
unification as the foundation of communities may hence explain the existence of
these social groups, even in absence of occurrent feelings of unification.7
But then, “how do we have to understand this foundation by means of habitual
unification?” (Walther 1923: 69, our translation). To answer this question Walther
resorts to the aforementioned transformative function of unification and thus to the
notion of social self:
Here, even if only in a vague awareness in the background [in einem dunklen Innesein im
Hintergrund] and absolutely not in attentive knowledge or presentation, other humans—“hu-
mans who also…” —are always “given,” in a more or less clear and noticed “co-presence”
[Mitgehabtheit] (Walther 1923: 69, our translation and italics).
The notion of “humans who also…” [Menschen, die auch…] could best be under-
stood as ranging over the subject’s fellows. For, according to Walther, the gap
expressed by the suspension points “…” is filled by psychological predicates which,
depending on the kind of unification at work in each case, point to such things as
aims, volitions, feelings, thoughts, etc. (see Walther 1923: 69). There is a sense in
which others who share any of these experiences with me are my fellows. Now, once
a subject has, one way or the other, involved fellows in one’s mental life by virtue
of habitual unification the subject makes up “a we” [ein Wir] with those fellows (see
Walther 1923: 70). “Experiencing is here characterized for the experiencing subject
not only as ‘I experience that,’ but as ‘we experience so’…” (Walther 1923: 70, our
translation and emphasis).
Notice the phrase “not only” [nicht nur] in Walther’s expression: For her the
experience in question, which in a sense is shared by us and thus characterized
7 According to Walther, unification may be habitual from the beginning, without being occurrent
[aktuell] (see Walther 1923: 44, 69; see also Zahavi and Salice 2016: 521). She does not give any
example of such habitual unification, but the following would probably serve as one. A child who
has grown up in a family may have habitual unification with the family without having any occurrent
feeling of unification with it. Let us note that it may be difficult to convincingly argue for such a
claim from a phenomenological point of view. We do not go into this issue any further, for the main
line of our discussion would remain the same, even if this part of Walther’s theory turns out to be
untenable.
as a “communal experience” [Gemeinschaftserlebnis], nevertheless takes place in

me (that is, in the subject as an individual). It is qualified as ours insofar as it is
originated in [entspringen aus] the background of her consciousness or her “self”
[Selbst] which lies behind her “ego-center” [Ichzentrum]8 (namely, in “the others in
me”; see Walther 1923: 71).9
For example, let us suppose that, based on my habitual unification with another
person, I share the same aim to write a paper with him and that I then deliberately
decide to write a section of the paper to achieve that goal. In this case Walther would
claim that my experience of making the decision is partly originated in the other in me.
For, in the process of deliberation, my decision, by accommodating the preference of
the other, may even have overridden my personal preference to do something else.
Therefore, there is a sense in which my decision has as its source the other with
whom I can be said to share the aim. At the same time, since I am the one who is
making the decision, there is also a sense in which the other in question is in me; after
all, I have not been forced or coerced into the activity. Accordingly, “other(s) in me”
would be a suitable expression to describe—somewhat metaphorically—situations
like the one portrayed in our example. In Walther’s view, to sum up, a subject’s
having habitual unification with others is nothing over and above this subject having
the others in the background of her consciousness in a certain way.10
Let us go back to Walther’s claim that communities are primarily founded on the
social self of their members. For Walther a community is a sui generis object that
is founded upon, but is not identical with, the relevant social selves.11 To put this
differently, the community ontologically emerges out of the social selves on which it
is founded. But there is more to it than this. Walther claims that an individual subject
can have (actual and habitual) unification not only with other individuals, but also
with this community “as such” [als solche] (see Walther 1923: 99–100).
It is with this idea in mind that, we suggest, one should interpret her claim that
social acts in the authentic sense are experiences that are oriented toward the social
community. When a subject of experience has established unification with a com-
munity as such, he can have communal experiences “which emerge in him from
the background of his consciousness [Bewußtseinshintergrund], from his self, [and]
8 The metaphorical expressions like “ego-center”, “self”, and so on are without any doubt inherited
from Pfänder (see, for example, Pfänder 1911; for further references see Marbach 1974: 245–246).
9 Thus, she explicitly rejects the conception of the we as a super-individual subject of experience
(see Walther 1923: 70).

10 This view is clearly echoed in Searle’s idea of a background sense of the other as collaborative
partner: “Collective intentionality presupposes a background sense of the other as a candidate for
cooperative agency; that is, it presupposes a sense of others as more than mere conscious agents,
indeed as actual or potential members of a cooperative activity” (Searle 2002: 104).
11 This claim follows from the following two points Walther makes in her 1923 piece. First, Walther
holds that a community itself [Gemeinschaft selbst] is different from the sum of items that founded
it (namely, subjects and their relationship, see Walther 1923: 97; for a discussion of communities
as objects of higher order within phenomenology, see also Salice 2016). Second, she qualifies that
a community is founded primarily on the social self of its members (see Walther 1923: 147).
from the ‘spirit of the community’ [Geist der Gemeinschaft]” (Walther 1923: 104,
our translation).
What is characteristic about such a communal experience is that it is had by the
subject merely in the name of or on behalf of the community and that its subject
thereby acts as a “representative” [Vertreter] of the community. This is exactly what
she conceives as a social act in the authentic sense: In this case the individual subject
of the experience needs not embrace and “jointly posit” [mitmachen] the purpose
of the community; rather, she has the experience as a social person rather than as a
private person (see Walther 1923: 105). To put this differently, the individual subject
may have an intentional attitude, the motivation of which is grounded entirely in the
group she belongs to and for which she, as an individual, may have no personal or
individual motive. In other words, the social self in which the communal experience
in question is originated is entirely social, as it were, insofar as it has nothing to
do with the individual’s personal aims, volition, thoughts, and so on. In this way
experiences like this are distinctively social in a specific sense of the term social.12
The Phenomenological Constitution of Communities
Let us take stock. We have said that individuals have the ability to unify with other
individuals and that this ability is a necessary precondition for the ontological con-
stitution of communities. We have also highlighted that, on Walther’s account, indi-
viduals also have the ability to unify with communities. When this happens the
individual is in a position to perform a social act that is motivated entirely in accor-
dance with the communal perspective. Such acts, in which the individual functions
as a representative of the community, are what Walther calls “social acts.”
Bearing all this in mind, we are now confident in arguing that Walther’s discussion
of social acts is relevant primarily for her phenomenology, rather than ontology, of
social communities. In fact, she claims:
Now we could call the genuine [echten] experiences and ways of behavior “on the purpose”
and “in the name” of the community “communal experiences of third order” or “communal
experiences in the most pregnant sense.” They are especially typical for those members,
who are the “organs” of the community, whether superordinate or subordinate organs. This
kind of experience is one in which the community phenomenologically constitutes itself
toward its own members as well as toward foreigners: they grasp the community through
these [experiences]. They are “social acts” in the most pregnant sense (Walther 1923: 111,
our translation and emphasis).
12 Walther’s ideas are in line with recent work in the theory of group agency. See “If we reach an
alignment between what the group requires of us and our individual attitudes through adopting the
group’s viewpoint, […] then we, the members, each have attitudes in whose propositional expression
the group figures as we. Each of us acts on beliefs and desires that call for expression in first-person
plural terms. They are desires that we do so and so, or beliefs that we can do such and such, that
link up with our responses without the mediation of any belief about our membership in the group”
(List and Pettit 2011: 192).
In this passage she talks about social acts “in the most authentic sense” on the basis
of the constitutive function (in the minimally Husserlian sense), which she ascribes to
those acts—meaning that she introduces the notion of social act to provide an answer
on how communities are given to an individual subject. On the one hand, Walther
does follow Husserl in that communities are phenomenologically (not ontologically)
constituted in social acts. On the other hand, she proposes a conception of a social
act that is totally different from, and in conflict with, Husserl’s and Reinach’s.
So, how are communities (phenomenologically) constituted, that is, how are they
given in consciousness? To answer this question, we need to take into consideration
her distinction between what she calls “genuine” [echt] and “non-genuine” [unecht]
experiences (or actions). She proposes that an experience is evaluated as genuine
or non-genuine, depending on its conformity to the personality of its subject (see
Walther 1923: 108–109). To put it crudely, an experience is genuine if the person-
ality that is typically revealed in the experience conforms to the personality of the
experiencing subject; it is non-genuine if there is a discrepancy between the two
personalities. To use Walther’s own example (Walther 1923: 108–109), if a child has
an attitude that conforms only to an adult, in the sense that the motivation for having
that attitude only derives from the adult, then the child’s attitude is non-genuine in
this sense.
In this way, Walther first operates with an individualist conception of (non-)
genuineness of experience; what is at stake here is the conformity of an experience
with the personality of its subject. But this idea can be generalized and applied to
the (non-)genuineness of a communal experience in accordance with the relevant
community (see Walther 1923: 109–110).13 Even if an experience in the name of or
on behalf of the community is non-genuine (or genuine) from its subject’s point of
view, it may be genuine (or non-genuine) from the point of view of the community.
No matter what the individual personality of the subject may be, the experience
qualifies as a genuine communal experience as long as it conforms to the communal
perspective.14
Now we can see what Walther has in mind when she talks about the constitutive
function of social acts in the most authentic sense (that is, genuine experiences in the
name of or on behalf of the community). Her contention is that a community is given
in a communal experience only if that experience conforms with the community in
some way or other.
So far, we have discussed how communities are given to their members—this
being the inner (phenomenological) constitution of communities. For the members
13 A similar idea is also found in Stein’s Beiträge, but her discussion is conducted in slightly different
terminology. According to her the key to the communality of an experience is the Richtigkeit, rather
than Echtheit, of that experience in accordance with the relevant community (see Stein 1922:
125–126).
14 To be precise, her claim is that a communal experience is genuine if it conforms either to the
empirical viz factual characteristics and behaviors (at a given time) or to the essence viz idea of the
community. According to her, this parallels the genuineness of experience from an individual point
of view. In the present chapter, however, we do not go into details of this and related issues such as
her discussion of the alleged personality of communities (see Walther 1923: 112–118).
the community is given in communal experiences or we-experience (namely, expe-

riences that presuppose (habitual) unification with the community and that conform
to the perspective of the community; see Walther 1923: 154). However, it is also
the case that a community can be given in the consciousness of individuals who do
not belong to that community. This observation motivates Walther in identifying an
“outer” constitution of communities in addition to the “inner constitution” (Walther
1923: 17).
Compared with the inner constitution, the outer constitution of communities is
more complex:
From now on, in order to really bring social communities to givenness, it is required that the
external observer adopts a social attitude [sich sozial einstellt] in empathy (as well as in the
intuition) (that is, that he is intentionally directed to the grasping of the communal life and
of the community every time a possibility for the fulfillment of this intention appears to be
present) (Walther 1923: 155–156, our translation)
It seems, hence, that the main difference between these two modes or ways the
phenomenological constitution of communities can be formulated is as follows. It is
at least in principle possible for any insider of the community to grasp their social
self by themselves alone, as long as they have some communal experience. For, at
least in principle, I do not need a fellow member’s presence when I am to qualify an
experience of mine as ours.
By contrast, except for special cases we will discuss soon, the presence of some
members of the community is indispensable for an outsider to have a community
given in her experience. In fact, as the quotation suggests, an external individual must
be able to empathically adopt the perspective of the community for this community
to be given to her. Otherwise, her thought about the community would remain empty.
If we accept Walther’s distinction between the outer and inner constitution of
communities, which is missing in the relevant discussion of Husserl, we find some
reason for her alternative proposal on how to think of social experiences. In talking
about social experiences in the most authentic sense in the above-quoted passage,
she writes, “This kind of experience is the one in which the community phenomeno-
logically constitutes itself toward its own members as well as toward foreigners:
they grasp the community through these [experiences]. They are ‘social acts’ in the
most pregnant sense” (Walther 1923: 111, our translation and italics). Her idea is that
experiences in the name of and on behalf of the community may also be performed
by outsiders (namely, those who do not belong to the community). For instance, as
a lawyer hired by a family, I can sign a contract for the family to which I do not
belong; in this case I am living through an experience of promising that is performed
in the name of and on behalf of the family. Given the constitutive function of social
acts in Walther’s sense, the family is given to me in my experience.
What is particularly noteworthy in this scenario is that the community is not given
to me from the outside, as when a member or a set of members of the community is
made the target of empathic acts. Rather, I experience the community in a participa-
tory sense: I act on behalf of the community. When this happens, it is also possible to
undergo the social experience even in the absence of group members. For instance,
I can sign a contract for the family in the absence of all the family members. Just
as group members can live through social acts in absence of their fellows, so can
outsiders perform acts on behalf of the community (and hence phenomenologically
“access” the community), even in the absence of group members who have expe-
riences of the same sort. In this way experiences in the name of and on behalf of
the community serve for both outer and inner constitution of the community as long
as they are genuine. Since Walther defines social acts in terms of their function to
phenomenologically (not ontologically) constitute communities, there is a sense in
which genuine experience in the name of and on behalf of the community are the
social acts par excellence.
In this way, Walther reaches toward a view that overcomes the limitation which we
have found in Husserl’s constitutive analysis of communities (see section “Husserl on
the Constitutive Function of Social Acts”). When Husserl ascribes the constitutive
function to social acts in Reinach’s sense he has in mind only the givenness of a
community to an insider of the community. From Walther’s perspective Husserl’s
theory falls too short because it leaves unexplained how the community is given to
outsiders. Even more importantly, Husserl does not deal with (and possibly is not
even aware of) a problem which Walther tackles by focusing on experiences in the
name of and on behalf of a community: (how) is it possible for the community to be
given to a subject regardless of whether this subject is an insider or outsider of the
community?
Now we are able to reconstruct a reason for Walther adopting her conception
of social acts. If one is to follow Husserl in defining social acts as experiences
in which a community is constituted, and if one is, beyond Husserl, to analyze
phenomenologically how the community is given to a subject whether or not she is
a group member, it would be reasonable to claim that the role of social acts is best
played by experiences in the name of and on behalf of the community.
It may be disputable whether the two presuppositions we have ascribed to Walther
are well grounded. Reinach might disagree with the first one. Husserl’s silence on the
second might suggest that he is skeptical about whether the givenness of a community
is phenomenologically analyzable from a standpoint that is sharable both for its
insiders and outsiders. Be that as it may, however, the above conditional claim as a
whole would explain very well Walther’s departure from Reinach by drawing only
on materials which she certainly was familiar with.
Conclusion
Let us summarize the three different conceptions of social acts which we have found
in Reinach, Husserl, and Walther, respectively. For Reinach the essential property
of social acts is being in need of being heard [Vernehmungsbedürftigkeit]; because
of this property, what qualifies a certain act as a social act is the peculiar way in
which this act is addressed to the other. Husserl accommodates this point, but he
ascribes to social acts an additional function: Social acts are experiences in which
communities are constituted. In other words, in addressing the other by means of
social acts a community is given to the subject. Walther distinguishes two senses
of constitution: Ontological and phenomenological. Ontologically, communities are
founded upon, among other things, (habitual) feelings of unification. But how are
communities given to subjects? In her view communities are phenomenologically
constituted in social acts. Although she follows Husserl in this respect, her notion of
a social act is completely transformed: A social act, according to Walther, is an act
that is performed in the name of and/or on behalf of the community.
Although this is a matter of speculation, given that Walther never touches upon
this issue, we believe that one additional reason that could have led her to develop
this theory of social acts may be related to the attempt at blocking internalistic
consequences (highlighted in section “Reinach’s Conception of Social Acts (and
Walther’s Departure from It)”) that seem compatible and consistent with Reinach’s
theory of social acts. In fact, the kind of act that Walther calls “social” cannot be
had by a brain in a vat, given that this act necessarily presupposes the existence of
a community with its own perspective. Only if one act accords with that perspective
does the act qualify as “social” in the (most) authentic sense. All this obviously
leaves open the question of whether or not Reinach’s framework offers conceptual
resources to resist that form of internalism. As we hinted in section “Introduction”,
we believe it is possible to find those resources, but pursuing this line of thought will
be the topic for another paper.
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Alessandro Salice is Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy of University College Cork. Pre-
viously, he held postdoctoral positions at the University of Graz, University of Basel, Univer-
sity of Vienna, and the Center for Subjectivity Research in Copenhagen. His expertise stretches
from classical accounts of collective intentionality and joint action to phenomenology, philoso-
phy of mind, and moral psychology. He has published widely on each of these topics. Recently,
he edited The Phenomenological Approach to Social Reality: History, Concepts, Problems (2016)
together with Hans Bernhard Schmid. He is responsible for the entry on the “Phenomenology of
the Munich and Göttingen Circles” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He is also a co-
editor of the Journal of Social Ontology.
Genki Uemura is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sci-
ences of Okayama University. His research field topics are: Husserl’s phenomenology, early
phenomenology, metaphysics and philosophy of mind/action from a phenomenological perspec-
tive. His recent and forthcoming publications include: “Husserl’s Conception of Cognition as an
Action”; “Demystifying Roman Ingarden’s Purely Intentional Objects of Perception”; and “Mo-
tives in Experience: Pfänder, Geiger, and Stein” (together with Alessandro Salice).
On Community: Edith Stein and Gerda
Walther
Anna Maria Pezzella
Abstract Edith Stein and Gerda Walther place great value on community, for both
thinkers view it as the fundamental, common, and necessary terrain in which one
can grow and be formed as human beings. Although they share a phenomenological
framework, they describe community in different ways. Stein starts from I-experience
to reach her understanding community, which is analyzed deeply and in all its con-
stitutive elements, whereas Walther moves from the social self and, hence, from
the background of psychic interiority in which the communal we moves and lives.
However, through different ways, both thinkers arrive at the same conclusion: they
converge on the role played by the I-center in the actualization of the lived experience
of community.
Keywords Ego · Community · Society · Humans, that also
Introduction
One finds constant reflection on intersubjective relations in phenomenology. Edmund

1
Husserl, for example, tackles theoretically complex questions like the constitution
2
of alterity, and he explores in diverse texts various forms of sociality, including
community, society, and the state. He claims that others are fundamental because the
person does not only see, listen, and experience with one’s own senses but also with
1 By constitution, Husserl means the mode in which objective unities (like the other) become man-
ifest and known in consciousness.

2 See Husserl’s Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Cartesianische Meditationen, and
Pariser Vorträge.
A. M. Pezzella (B)
Pontifical Lateran University, Rome, Italy
e-mail: annamaria.pezzella@virgilio.it

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_4
48 A. M. Pezzella
the other’s and vice versa.3 One cannot think of the human being outside a human
environment and context. One can choose to live as a hermit, but only after learning
all the behavior typically associated with being human.
Because our relationships to others are fundamental for our growth and formation,
we investigate deeply these very relationships. In addition to Husserl’s own treat-
ments of this topic, we also find other phenomenologists interested in it, including
Adolf Reinach, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Max Scheler, Alexander Pfänder, Edith
Stein, and Gerda Walther.
The two phenomenologists we explore here in this chapter were both students of
Husserl. Edith Stein trained under Husserl at both Göttingen and Freiburg. She com-
pleted her thesis, Zum Problem der Einfühlung [On the problem of empathy] under
his direction. Gerda Walther was a student of Pfänder in Munich—a philosopher
whom Husserl held in high esteem. Husserl so valued him that “before making the
transcendental turn and before knowing Heidegger, he thought [Pfänder] as the most
suitable successor to his chair at Freiburg.”4 After his transcendental turn, Husserl,
as Walther recounts in her autobiography Zum anderen Ufer, did not believe that the
phenomenology being carried out at Munich was the same as his own insofar as the
Munich phenomenologists remained fixed on the analysis of essence.5 Walther com-
pleted her doctorate, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” under Pfänder. It
was published in 1923 in Husserl’s Jahrbuch. One year earlier, in the same Jahrbuch,
Stein published her Beiträge zur philosophischen Begrundung der Psychologie und
der Geisteswissenschaften.
The two women phenomenologists knew one another. They met at Freiburg in
what Edith Stein called her philosophical kindergarten. In a letter dated August 7,
1917 addressed to Roman Ingarden, Stein writes, “I believe you asked me again about
the results of my teaching. Some of the students seem very promising, especially Mr.
Clauss … and Miss Walther, who hails from Munich and who intends to work with
Pfänder on the phenomenology of society.”6 In another letter to Ingarden dated June
24, 1918, Stein writes, “Clauss and Miss Walther (who participate in our discussions)
will certainly become very capable phenomenologists …”7 The active participation
of Walther in phenomenology is also confirmed by another letter sent by Husserl to
Ingarden on November 16, 1918. Husserl writes, “Miss Walther worked on the index
[for my Ideas I] during the summer break and Mr. Clauss also wanted to help her.”8
Only two years later, however, Walther returned to Munich from Freiburg. Ingarden
3 See Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, ed. by E. Marbach (Husserliana
Materialien Series No. 14) (The Hague: Springer, 1973), 197.

4 Michele Lenoci, “Logica, ontologia e fenomenologia in A. Pfänder,” in Il realismo fenomenologico.
Sulla filosofia dei circoli di Monaco e Gottinga (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2000), 673.
5 See Angela Ales Bello, Fenomenologia dell’essere umano. Lineamenti di una filosofia al femminile
(Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 1992), 67. Angela Ales Bello was the first person in Italy to introduce
Gerda Walther’s philosophical work to the public.
6 Edith Stein, Lettere a Roman Ingarden 1917–1938, Italian trans. by E. Costantini and Erika
Schulze, revised by Anna Maria Pezzella (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2001), 69.
7 Edith Stein, Lettere a Roman Ingarden 1917–1938, 103.
8 Edmund Husserl, Briefe an R. Ingarden (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), 12.
On Community: Edith Stein and Gerda Walther 49
asked Stein for Walther’s address, but Stein replied that she no longer had contact
with her9 and that he should write to Pfänder for the information. Pfänder exerted
a huge influence on Walther and she expressly notes in her autobiography that she
was deeply touched by her encounter with him.10
The filiation of the two women philosophers also signals a difference in the way
they understood and practiced phenomenology and responded to philosophical ques-
tions. Obviously, the differences between them can also be attributed to their differ-
ent personalities, temperaments, theoretical and human experiences, but one must
not underestimate the influence of their respective teachers. Although Husserl and
Pfänder share a common field of phenomenological inquiry, they nonetheless have
different perspectives and approaches to the same questions.
The Relation Between the I and the Community
The I-community relation is pivotal for understanding the different emphasis the
two women phenomenologists place on the I within their own respective philosoph-
ical frameworks. We explore the difference by exploring two texts that appeared in
Husserl’s Jahrbuch. Edith Stein’s “Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities”
[Beiträge der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften], dedicated to Husserl for
his 60th birthday, consists of two parts: “Psychic Causality” and “Individual and
Community.” Stein treats psychic causality for two reasons. First, she views her text
as a contribution to then-contemporary debates, which Husserl also criticizes, on the
status of empirical, positivist psychology, which grounded itself on the “fantasy of a
natural scientific method that followed the model used by chemistry and physics.”11
Like Husserl, Stein refuses the idea of such a mathematization of the soul that ren-
ders it both determined and quantifiable. Both philosophers were convinced that the
human being could not be investigated with the same criteria used by the natural sci-
ences because the human being is a spiritual, free subject and, hence, it is impossible
to quantify or determine human action with mathematical precision.
In her investigation of psyche, Stein does not negate the relation of causality
that may exist between certain lived experiences, but she demonstrates that psychic
causality is different than the model of causality followed by the natural sciences
and the positivists. Stein claims that psyche is also conditioned by feelings of life
and the life-force, and these remain unquantifiable. She also argues that cause and
effect relations present within psyche are not always reiterable or exactly repeatable.
For example, excessive tiredness (cause) may not permit me to go out (effect), but
if I know that my presence will be of great benefit to a sick friend, I overcome my
9 Stein,
Lettere a Roman Ingarden 1917–1938, 69 and 103.
10 GerdaWalter, Zum anderen Ufer—Vom Marxismus und Atheismus zum Christentum (Remagen:
Otto Reichel Verlag, 1960), 185.
11 Edmund Husserl, La filosofia come scienza rigorosa, trans. Filippo Costa (Pisa: ETS Editrice,
1990), 65.
50 A. M. Pezzella
tiredness and go visit her. In the human life, which is also a spiritual life, one finds
the lawfulness of motivation that permits me to act despite unfavorable physical
or psychic conditions. Motivation “… is the connection that acts get into with one
another: not a mere blending like that of simultaneously or sequentially ebbing phases
of experience, or the associative tying together of experience, but an emerging of the
one out of the other, a self-fulfilling or being fulfilled of the one on the basis of the
other for the sake of the other.”12
Stein is aware that an analysis that only considers an individual being, without
any relation to other human beings, remains abstract, for she maintains that the
mechanism of psyche is not closed in on itself; rather, it draws strength from the
external world and other human beings. There are constant references by psyche
that go beyond the single individual and that open onto a social and spiritual world.
In Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person [The Structure of the Human Person], she
writes, “The observation of a single, isolated individual is abstract. The individual’s
being is a being in the world, and its life is life in community.”13 Stein begins her own
philosophical explorations from the perspective of the solitary I because she wants to
demonstrate the structure of lived experience and its interrelation with causality and
motivation, ultimately leading to the investigation of how individual lived experiences
can become interwoven with communal ones. The I has its own undeniable solitude,
but it is also capable of dwelling in community. Stein moves from an analysis of the
I to community because she wishes to understand “how this ego, notwithstanding its
solitariness and inalienable aloneness, can enter into a community of life with other
subject, how the individual subject becomes a member of a super-individual subject,
and also how a super-individual current of experience is constituted in the active
living of such a community-subject or community’s subject.”14
Stein’s starting point is the I, which, for her, is essential, and remains so even when
she distances herself from Husserl. His analysis of the I perhaps may be viewed as
his most important teaching for Stein, despite all the differences between them and
despite her criticisms of her old teacher. We see her fidelity to Husserl in Kreuzeswis-
senschaft, in which she maintains that God does not transgress a person’s own free-
dom and that the soul can affect itself because it has the conformation of the I.
Moreover, thanks to the I the person possesses itself and all that moves and lives in
its own spatial sphere.15
Gerda Walther, in her text “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” proceeds
differently than Stein: she explores the interior connection between subjects to arrive,
in a second moment, at the reality of the I without first deeply analyzing the relation
between the I and community. This notion of the I, Walther maintains, arises because
12 Edith Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, trans. by Mary Catharine Baseheart
and Marianne Sawicki (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2000), 41.
13 Edith Stein, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person (Vorlesung zur philosophischen Anthropologie)
(Freiburg: Herder, 2004), 134.

14 Edith Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 133.
15 Edith Stein, Kreuzeswissenschaft:Studie über Johannes vom Kreuz (Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe
No. 18) (Freiburg: Herder, 2015).

“… the unity of the community is something that literally remains in the background
or behind the I-center.”16 Others, in part, remain in the background of the subject,
though subject and others exist together, with one another, forming a we that is
not always immediately and clearly aware of itself. Further, it should be noted that
Walther came to phenomenology from a Marxist background, hence it is reasonable
to assume that she would give to the social a major place in her writing17 :
For this reason, from the period of my early university studies, I was inclined to doubt
traditional theories that advocated a cause–effect model of a succession of level or grades of
society and that grounded community in an aggregate of individuals that came into contact
with one another based simply on the shared experience of their common, surrounding
physical–spatial world.18
Hence, despite her time at Freiburg, she accepts neither Husserl’s nor Stein’s
analyses of the primordiality of the I. This is one of the reasons that Walther may
be viewed as preferring to return to the Munich School of Phenomenology led by
Pfänder. She may be seen as not wanting to examine, as Husserl would have required,
the modality in which the community externally constitutes itself in consciousness, a
modality in which she later becomes interested, as witnessed in her later reflections.
There, she posits a social self from and exclusively upon which a comprehension of
the relation between the individual and the community becomes possible. Walther
considers this approach to be a true and proper Copernican Revolution. Starting from
this core insight, she develops an ontology of social communities that defines their
essence and structure. She does not refute a priori the transcendental analysis, but
she does not believe that it is the right starting point for an analysis of community.
She remarks:
Ontology investigates the ultimate sense of every objectivity, understood in its broadest
possible sense, for phenomenology researches this objectivity through its necessary, manifest
ways of givenness, appearance, and knowing in consciousness. Ontology begins from this
pure consciousness and its pure I, from this most originary standpoint …19
16 Antonio Calcagno, “Gerda Walter. Sulla possibilità di un senso passivo della comunità e della
coscienza interna del tempo,” in Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Gerda Walter. Fenomenolo-
gia della persona, della vita e della comunità, ed. by Angela Ales Bello, Francesco Alfieri, Mobeen
Shahid (Bari: Edizioni Giuseppe Laterza, 2011), 774.
17 Gerda Walther, Zum anderen Ufer, 270.
18 Alice Togni, “Reciprocità e responsabilità: l’analisi delle comunità sociali in Gerda Walter,” in
Per la filosofia, vol. 100–101, May–December, 2017, 62.

19 Gerda Walther, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” in Jahrbuch für Pholosophie und
phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. VI (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1923), 1. In the first volume of
the Ideas, whose index Walther prepared, Husserl deals with the question of ontology. He main-
tains, “Every concrete, empirical object inserts itself with its material essence into a higher material
genus, in a region of empirical objects. A regional essence corresponds to a regional eidetic science
or, in other terms, a regional science”—E. Husserl, Idee per una fenomenologia pura e per una
filosofia fenomenologica, Vol. I, ed. by E. Filippini (Torino: Einaudi, 1982, 26). The question of
ontology is a vexata quaestio because a minor or major determination of an object signals the divide
between realist and transcendental phenomenologists. On this question of realist versus transcen-
dental phenomenology, Walther follows her teacher, Pfänder, who understands formal ontology as
a theory of the object and its properties. But this ontology serves also as the foundation for further
52 A. M. Pezzella
Edith Stein and Gerda Walther, though they share a phenomenological framework,
describe community in different ways. Stein starts from I-experience to reach her
understanding community, which is analyzed deeply and in all its constitutive ele-
ments, whereas Walther moves from the social self and, hence, from the background
of psychic interiority in which the communal we moves and lives. The commu-
nity is not an autonomous person in that it does not possess a center endowed with
consciousness and will.
Community in Edith Stein and Gerda Walther
Stein reflects at length on community and connects it to the person. The idea of
the person appears consistently throughout Stein’s corpus, from On the Problem of
Empathy to Finite and Eternal Being. In her 1922 text Philosophy of Psychology and
the Humanities, Stein directly examines the question of community by asking: What
is a community? Referring to Tönnies, she claims, “where a subject accepts the other
as a subject and does not confront him but rather lives with him and is determined by
the stirrings of his life, they are forming a community with one another.”20 Stein’s
definition is simple and clear: a community exists when an interior opening to others
exists and, hence, a solidarity. She continues to develop this view of community
in her Aufbau der menschlichen Person, in which she shares a position similar to
Dietrich von Hildebrand’s insofar as he defines a community as a social formation
grounded in persons, their social acts and relations, and, above all, in the primary
mode of a community of humanity. “Every human community, from the smallest to
the ‘largest,’ is grounded in a more basic, encompassing community, namely, human-
ity.”21 Communities arise without any intervention of the will; they may arise from
a shared life (for example, communities that are born out of classroom friendships
determination of content that can form material ontologies, which are more determined than formal
ontologies, even though they need to follow certain laws. Walther maintains that, in Husserl, there is
no individual essence, understood in the strict sense. One can speak of general essences to the point
that one can achieve knowledge of an individual essence: “[…] jedes eidos […] sich verkörpern
kann […] bei in jeder geistigen Person im Sinne Schelers, […], bei jedem Grundwesen im Sinne A.
Pfänders, auch das Wesen eines “Engels” oder einer einmaligen Kunstschöpfung” (Gerda Walter,
“Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” in Jahrbuch für Pholosophie und phänomenologis-
che Forschung, cit. p. 5, note 3). Edith Stein takes up later the aforementioned question in her Finite
and Eternal Being. In note 43 of chapter 3 she discusses Husserl’s position as developed in his
Ideas, which maintained that the quid of an individual thing could be seized by seeing the essence,
but without actualizing a position from experience. Stein writes, “This concession only takes one
side of reality into consideration, namely, the essential essence; it cuts the link to reality, a link that
does not exist external to the essence, but which intrinsically belongs to it. It is precisely from the
standpoint of this cut, made at the root that separates fact and essence, that one can understand how
Husserl arrived at his idealist interpretation of reality, while his followers (Max Scheler, Alexander
Pfänder, Adolf Reinach, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Jean Héring, etc.) all guided by the full sense of
essence, followed always more intensely as realist conception.”
21 Edith Stein, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, 136.
or from living in a certain city or country). They may also emerge from some family
bond, shared feelings, particular friendships, matrimony, or even from societies that
share a common goal, as is the case with some learned societies.22
In Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, Stein tackles the difficult ques-
tion of how one moves from the lived experience of an individual to the experience
of community. She uses the example of the death of a beloved troop leader to explain
the transition.23 The sadness over the loss of the troop leader is content that is shared
collectively by the community: all members of the community share the experience
of sadness. But the communal experience can only be experienced by each individual
member, in his or her own consciousness and only insofar as each individual experi-
ence himself or herself as members of the community who undergo the experience
of collective sadness. In the individual I the sadness is lived as communal sadness:
the community is sad, and as a member of the community I am sad with the com-
munity and the community is sad with me. Yet, the I grasps and lives the communal
sadness. The collective sadness is an object and can be understood as such by indi-
vidual members of the troop. Each member of the troop experiences his or her own
sadness as well as the collective sadness of the community members. The collective
experience of sadness is built, both the noetic and noematic elements, from the lived
experiences of individuals who feel the collective sadness. If the communal sadness
neither manifests itself nor is grasped by individual members, then no community
exists. Yet, community remains possible if only one member grasps the communal
sadness: “They all share in the assembling of the communal experience; but that
which was intended in all of them came to fulfillment in the experience of this one
alone.”24
Stein claims for the individual a great autonomy: the community cannot and must
not absorb the individual because she/he has a vast personal domain that remains
distinct from the community, even though she/he may be a member of a community.
Individual and community are never identical. Edith Stein is diffident to visions that
view the human being only as social beings. In fact, in Der Aufbau der menschlichen
Person she observes: “One finds today the widespread tendency to view human
beings as solely determined by their membership in a social whole, thereby denying
the reality of an individual personality.”25
Walther follows, in part, Stein’s view of community. In her definition of commu-
nity, Walther proceeds in stages of analysis, adding diverse elements when called for
to arrive at a comprehensive definition of community:
We found a number of human beings that have, as a certain layer of their lives, the same
intentional object. In principle, this knowledge deals directly or indirectly with the exchange
22 Edith Stein, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, 137–138.

23 This example is framed by the context of the WWI. Stein’s own service as a nurse in a lazaretto
near the front, where Stein attended to many sick and dying soldiers, and the death of her beloved
teacher, Adolf Reinach. Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities was written in 1919 and
published three years later in Husserl’s Jahrbuch.
54 A. M. Pezzella
of individuals with one another, and from this exchange a communal life emerges … [H]ence,
each intention directed to the same object, immediately or mediately grasped, has been
motivated in a unified sense.”26
Starting her investigation by exploring the constitution of the inner experience

of community, Walther proceeds to investigate the elements that constitute commu-
nity and help distinguish one community from another. Communities can be either
reflexive or iterative. The former only refer to the members themselves and they
are permeated and regulated by a common sense given by the unity of the com-
munity itself, whereas in the latter members give a proper sense to their communal
life though a common object. Every community possesses an intentional object that
is communally obtained by all members. The object, broadly understood, may be
the community itself or the intentional consolidation of the reciprocal union of its
members. This union may be, and it would be better if it were the case, habitual:
[The community] need not be constituted from the actual, present union of its members with
others; rather, it can also be habitual: a unified, habitual resting of one member in another
member, whether expressed, actually present, or even as an unconscious growing together,
comes to be. Habitual union exists in all members, and it can act as the foundation or ground
of a community.27
The consolidation of life through a habitual union is realized though the category
of “humans, that also …,” which is always deeply present in the subject: these implied
other humans are part of the individual, and together they constitute a communal we
of which the individual is not always clearly conscious, but which is nonetheless
unified in those layers that require the sense of community. “The humans, that also
…” are behind my egological center and they are always present in the background.
Hence, the lived experiences of community are originary lived experiences.28 The
subject
… rests in the community and belongs to it, no matter how loosely or limitedly, and it belongs
to him or her: together they build a we. The subject’s life, insofar as it is communal, is not
only his or her life, nor does community swell out of the subject alone, understood as a
single individual; rather, community arises out of the union of the individual with others.
The lived experience of the living, experiencing subject can be characterized not only as I
experience or live this, but as we live this, I and the others with whom I am unified, live this
lived experience together.29
Again, my lived experiences, insofar as they are communal lived experiences, do

not solely arise from the personal I but also from others, from “Humans, that also,”
with whom I live and rest.
A problem arises in Walther’s analysis: Does the possibility of communal guilt and
responsibility exist or are they purely individual phenomena? For Stein the question
of communal guilt and responsibility does not pose a problem, for they are localized
26 Gerda Walther, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” 29–30.

27 Gerda Walther, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” 69.
28 Gerda Walther, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” 69–71.
within the framework of the individual person. Stein remarks in the Philosophy of
Psychology and the Humanities:
Certainly the act of the community can also be culpable or meritorious. But whether the
single member participates in them or withholds himself from them, this is a matter of his
freedom and he himself has to answer for it. It’s presupposed on this, of course, that we’re
dealing with a community of free persons—we could also simply say: [a community made
up] of person, for freedom belongs to persons. This presupposition just isn’t there with
Scheler. […] We’d just like to mention that in any community with no members at all who
execute acts freely and on their own (insofar as something like that is conceivable at all) you
can’t discuss any responsibility, in the strict sense. You can’t talk about the community’s
responsibility any more than that of the lone members.30
Walther raises the same problem as Stein on communal guilt. The problem is
central for Walther insofar as she has a stricter, non-egoic view of community in
which the community pre-exists in the individual in the background that allows
communal experiences to be experienced precisely as communal. Although Walther
posits a deep communal structure in the background of individuals, she still maintains
the role of the I-center in actualization of the lived experience of community. She
notes, “[The lived experience of community] can only be actualized by passing
through the individual I-center of the individual members.”31 Walther affirms that,
although the community is a psycho-spiritual unity, it does not possess the essential
trait of a person (that is, a center endowed with its own consciousness and will [das
Bewusstseins- und Willenszentrum]); therefore, “the community is reliant more on
the I-center of its members as well as their bodies.”32
Conclusion
Stein and Walther’s positions on community are certainly very similar, especially
in terms of some of their conclusions. Moreover, though they may differ on how
they arrive at their conclusions, the differences between them are also relevant and
substantial. Edith Stein simply makes use of Tönnies distinction, and she does not
add or amplify its essential insight: a community exists when one can verify an
interior opening among subjects to one another. Members could potentially have,
then, neither a common, intentional object among them nor know one another in a
reciprocal action nor be motivated in a unitary fashion by an intention, as Walther
maintains. All that is needed is to accept one another as persons such that a community
becomes possible. It is from this acceptance that community becomes possible. Stein
makes an interesting claim in the Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities when
she maintains that a life community is possible even between two enemies that face
one another on the battlefield because there is an opening of interiority: “Just such a
30 EdithStein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 195–196.

56 A. M. Pezzella
‘naïve’ posture even exists in combat between hostile parties. Here the one is taking
the other simply as a subject, and is leaving himself open to all the influences that
are emanating from the other. Thus, they form a unity of life in spite of the chasm
that exists between them, and it can be that one [party] fills the other with the power
which then is directed against itself in the attack.”33
The willingness for and openness to the other create relations and flows of experi-
ence that intersect, and when this happens one sees the passage of life, of sentiments,
that ultimately make the community live. This view of interior openness as being
foundational for community is very much in accord with the Christian position of
unconditionally welcoming the other. Stein maintains that this is possible, even from
an egological perspective—a position that is stronger in Stein than in Walther, though
the latter also speaks of telepathy as demonstrating a great capacity for entering into
the lived experience of the other. For Walther, it is possible for the other to feel what
the other feels at a given moment, even though the other may not be visibly live
before us. This position would have been hard to accept for both Stein and Pfänder
because both of them argue that it is impossible to feel exactly what the other feels
or lives. For Stein, subjects remain separate from one another: each has his or her
own uniqueness or individuality, but this does not negate the possibility of subjects
encountering and grasping one another as human beings. Despite the differences
between the two philosophers, it is important to highlight that both Walther and
Stein place great value on community, for it is for both of them the fundamental,
common, and necessary terrain in which one can grow and be formed as human
beings.
Anna Maria Pezzella was born in Naples. In 1989 she graduated from the Università degli Studi
di Napoli Federico II, and in 1994 she completed her PhD at the Lateran University in Rome.
Between 1995 and 1998 she served as an assistant to the Chair of Contemporary Philosophy at
the same university. Since 1998 she has been a university professor at the Lateran University,
and since 2003 she has taught the Philosophy of Education. Since 2009 she has also taught ped-
agogy. The manager of the Centro Ricerche e Studi Edith Stein (Rome), Anna Maria Pezzella
also takes care of the website www.centrostudiedithstein.it. She is also a member of the Interna-
tional Research Area Dedicated to Edith Stein and Gender Theory in Rome. Her main philosoph-
ical interests lie in the history of 20th-century thought, especially the philosophy of Edith Stein,
whose works she has translated (Beiträge, Einführung in die Philosophie, Bildung, etc.). Pezzella’s
papers have been published in various Italian and foreign journals. She also investigates the work
of women philosophers like Maria Zambrano along with questions relevant to the philosophy of
education and phenomenological pedagogy.
33 Edith Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 206–207. Here, one may also under-
stand the Christian edict to turn the other cheek: I hate the other; I do not respond with hate, but
with love. I offer the other cheek as a sign of this love.
Gerda Walther and the Possibility
of a Non-intentional We of Community
Antonio Calcagno
Abstract Gerda Walther identifies the possibility of we-communities that are non-
intentional and have no intentional object (for example, a community of lovers).
What is expressed, shared, communicated, and understood between lovers need not
necessarily manifest itself in an objective, social, or communal form, as is the case, for
example, in a political party. I argue that this non-intentional we can be experienced
at the level of habit or affect, a level that is lived but which is not fully grasped in
terms of the consciousness of meaning and the relation between meaning fulfillment
and meaning intention.
Keywords Gerda walther · We sociality · Non-intentional community

Reflexive community · Habit · Community
Gerda Walther (1897–1977), one of the early Phenomenological Movement’s impor-

tant thinkers, viewed her work as intersecting between phenomenology, psychology,
and sociology. She took seriously Edmund Husserl’s directive to examine things
themselves to comprehend how it is that our own lived experience could yield
understanding of objects as they present themselves to consciousness. Trained in
part by Edith Stein in Husserl’s “phenomenological kindergarten,” Walther, like
Stein, was interested in questions about social ontology and psychology. In her
work, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften” (On the “Ontology of Social
1
Communities”), Walther defends the possibility of a strong we-consciousness, we-
intentionality, and objective we-communities. A community, for Walther, is under-
stood as a unity or oneness, a Vereinigung. Communities are marked by structures
of habit, intentional we-consciousness, affectivity, and a meaningful consciousness
of what it is to be and live as a unity or a we. Communities have both subjective and
1 Gerda Walther, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und
phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. 6, ed. by Edmund Husserl, Moritz Geiger, Alexander Pfänder,
and Max Scheler (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1923), 1–158. Hereafter parenthetically cited as OSG.
A. Calcagno (B)
Department of Philosophy, King’s University College, 266 Epworth Avenue, London, ON N6A
2M3, Canada
e-mail: acalcagn@uwo.ca
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_5
58 A. Calcagno
objective sides, an an sich and für sich. Walther analyzes how certain linguistic for-
mulations reveal we-objectivities (for example, formulations “in the name of …” or
“on behalf of …” can bespeak or perform a certain we-reality). Curious in her analy-
sis of the we is the fact that Walther also identifies the possibility of we-communities
that are non-intentional and have no classical intentional object. Love is an example
she focuses on as fulfilling the possibility of a non-intentional we: What is expressed,
shared, communicated, and understood between lovers need not necessarily mani-
fest itself in an objective, social, or communal form, as is the case, for example, in
a political party. Yet, the lovers together live and experience each other as a unity, a
we-community. The way she justifies a non-objectivated we-community is through
the mutual grasping of the meaning or sense [Sinn] of the particular unity that lovers
experience of being in a union without that meaning necessarily being objectivated
in some social, communal externalized reality. Non-intentional communities were
important for phenomenology as they were forms of sociality that resisted more pos-
itivistic sociological accounts that reduced the genesis of community to material,
behaviorist, psychologistic, or historical factors. Moreover, the possibility of non-
intentional communities could account for deeper affective structures of social life
like love and friendship that were neither merely economic exchanges of a “tit for
tat” sociality nor simply evolutionary structures developed for human survival.
Walther indeed makes a valid phenomenological claim about the possibility of a
non-intentional we, a we that does not correspond to an intentional object at the level
of an active, constituting (that is, sense-giving and sense-making) consciousness.
But, in this chapter I would like to explore a possibility: if there exist non-intentional
forms of we-communities, the meaning grasped, lived through, and constituted in
the aforementioned type of community, understood as self-referential, need not be
completely clear or fully present. I argue that the we of community can be experienced
at the level of habit or affect, a level that is lived but which is not fully grasped in
terms of the consciousness of objectivated meaning and the relation between meaning
fulfillment and meaning intention. In this sense, one can speak of pre-conscious or
passive presentation, in affect or habit, of a we that presents somewhat as an object,
but this object, though it can register some form of meaning, is never and can never be
fully formed, because the object itself is constantly in formation. In more practical
terms, the reason why lovers can never fully objectify, and therefore make fully
conscious or graspable, their love, to use more traditional, phenomenological terms,
is that the love itself is a kind of object that is unlike other objects in that it is subject
to the time of becoming and its essence is in constant formation. Love unfolds over
time and can never present as a whole; rather, we only grasp aspects of the love.
These aspects, perhaps like the different aspects of the house in Husserl’s Logical
Investigations, only are parts that we know point to a larger reality. I see habits and
affects of love as parts of a whole that point to a larger reality called love. The parts
have some objectivated presence, but the whole of love is never equal to the sum of
its parts.
Gerda Walther and the Possibility of a Non-intentional … 59
Gerda Walther on the Unity of Communal Oneness
Walther’s work on community and psychology has been largely neglected. Yet, her
work is important for presenting a fusional model of community that is rationally
graspable both as sense [Sinn] and as a deep feeling or affect. In many ways, she
extends Scheler’s views, while developing her own view outside a largely person-
alistic and value-centered model. Her work also provides a critique of more egoic
models of community that one finds in Husserl and Stein. Also unique is Walther’s
taking up of key insights (for example, the discussion of Gesinnung [attitude] by
her teacher and mentor, Alexander Pfänder, who was a student of Theodor Lipps).
The question of a non-intentional we or community is addressed by phenomenol-
ogists like Stein,2 Scheler,3 and Dietrich von Hildebrand.4 In On the Problem of
Empathy, for example, Stein says that love is a value that cannot be objectivated
in the same way as other values.5 Like Scheler, she claims that love (and hate, for
Scheler) is a value that cannot be easily intentionally objectivated because the object
of love exceeds what consciousness can grasp of it, largely because the object is
usually a person with a distinct personality. Empathy cannot make fully present the
whole mind and personality of the other in se. It can only analogically make present
a part or aspect of what the subject intends about the mind of another through a
comparison with the subject’s own experience of himself/herself. Love as a value,
indeed the highest value for Stein, cannot be fully presentified and analogically lived
through as it is experienced in another. Love, then, is a unique phenomenon that can
be understood as value, whose content is not fully objectivated in consciousness (E
102–105). Walther defends the aforementioned view of certain forms of community
that have non-intentional objects. Yet, her understanding of the passive structures
of consciousness, especially habit and affect, can be deployed to explain how we-
communities may be partially conscious of an object, albeit an object that is not fully
formed and in a state of becoming that may never be able to be fully realizable. In
my view, we can find what Stein and Husserl describe as hyletic content dragging
behind itself noetic content: the passive synthesis that we find in the hyletic sphere
of genetic phenomenology first announces or manifests the possibility of an object
that eventually may appear in the noetic realm.6 Hence, although Walther defends
the possibility of non-intentional we-communities, we must see them as not wholly
2 Edith Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities [Beiträge zur philosophischen Begrün-
dung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften], trans. by Mary Catherine Baseheart and
Marianne Sawicki (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2000).
3 Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, trans. by Peter Heath with an Introduction by Graham
McAleer (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008); Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics
and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, trans. by Manfred Frings and Roger L. Funk (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1973).
4 Dietrich von Hildebrand, Die Metaphysik der Gemeinschaft (Regensburg: Habbel Verlag, 1955).
5 Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. by Waltraut Stein (Washington, DC: ICS Publica-
tions, 1989), 102. Hereafter parenthetically cited as E.

6 See Angela Ales Bello’s masterful study, The Sense of Things (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015).
60 A. Calcagno
non-intentional, for in passive levels of consciousness some objectivation occurs,

especially in Walther’s analysis of habit and affect.
Before discussing Walther’s analysis of community, we need to understand her
view of what phenomenology is and how it achieves what it purports to do. Like
Husserl, Stein, and Reinach, Walther maintains that phenomenology is the study of
what appears in consciousness and how we live through [Durchlebens] such manifes-
tations in consciousness (OSG 2). The lived experience of consciousness intention-
ally correlates to objects in the world; consciousness can objectivate what is given to
consciousness, and in grasping the sense of what is given to consciousness, we also
simultaneously grasp the meaning or sense of the object in the real world (OSG 2–3).
The achievement of sense [Sinn] allows us to grasp the essence of an objectivated
thing in consciousness, and this essence is what the thing is in its reality in the world.
Walther, here, follows an earlier version of the phenomenological method, which
Husserl later dismisses as descriptive or mundane while developing and defending
the need for a transcendental phenomenology. Walther sees her work as fitting into
a regional ontology (OSG 4) of social objectivities, and she sees phenomenology in
non-transcendental terms:
Das schließt nun freilich nicht aus, daß als Methode in der Phänomenologie die Wesenser-
fahrung eine große Rolle spielt, den die Phänomenologie will sich ja nicht mit irgendwelchen
Tatsächlichkeiten des Bewußtseins und der empirischzufälligen Einzelerlebnisse abgeben,
sondern ihr Wesen, ihr wesentlichen Unterschiede und Strukturzusammenhänge erforschen.
Die Phänomenologie ist also selbst eine Wesenswissenschaft, die es mit dem Wesen des die
Gegenstände konstituierenden Bewußtseins in weitesten Sinne zu tun hat (OSG 4).
Although Walther comes to phenomenology after Husserl’s transcendental turn,

she chooses to follow its more eidetic form as developed and taught by Stein and
Reinach. I do not wish to deal here with the question of the relationship between and
limitations of ideal, real, and transcendental approaches to phenomenology, as this
would take us beyond the focus of our investigation here. It is important, however, to
signal the importance of intentionality, the objective correlate of intentionality, and
the belief in the possibility of achieving sense or sense-making—understood as man-
ifesting the objective nature or embodiment [Verkörperung] of a real object (OSG 7,
9) in the world. It should also be remarked that contemporary analytic approaches
to social ontology critique thinkers like Husserl, Stein, Scheler, and Walther as pre-
senting a folk-psychological account of social mind and social objectivities.7 What
these critiques fail to recognize are the importance and power of the achievement of
sense, through eidetic reduction (OSG 5), understood as the correspondence between
or adequation of (OSG 6) meaning intention and meaning fulfillment. This early and
7 Frédérique de Vignemont, “Drawing the Boundary between Low-level and High-level Mindread-
ing,” in Philosophical Studies, Vol. 144, 2009, 457–466; “Knowing Other People’s Mental States as
If They Were One’s Own,” in S. Gallagher and D. Schmicking (eds.), Handbook of Phenomenology
and Cognitive Science (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), 283–299; Alvin I. Goldman, Simulating Minds:
The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008).
important discovery that Husserl made in his Logical Investigations is rarely dis-
cussed by critics of the early phenomenological method.8
For Walther communities, like all social objectivities, manifest two aspects about
themselves: first, they have an “outer” constitution (that is, they are organized and
stand in specific relation to outer realities); second, they have an inner constitution
(that is, the members of a community or social objectivity are conscious of a cer-
tain state of mind—in other words, the meaning of the lived experience of the state
of mind) when they experience themselves living in a community or social com-
munity, including society or Gesellschaft (OSG 17). Community, understood as a
particular form or type of sociality or social objectivity, is not to be understood as a
society—in particular, as Max Weber understood society. Walther criticizes Weber’s
understanding of society because, although it shares similar characteristics to the
phenomenological understanding of community, it lacks a robust inner account of
the lived experience of community as a particular, shared, and meaningful experience
of unity or Vereinigung (OSG 32–34). Weber, according to Walther, sees society as a
particular ordered form of individuals who are motivated by an external goal or end
(for example, a particular form of work).
According to Walther, communities are marked by a particular form of a lived
experience of community or Gemeinschaftserlebnis. She describes the essence
[Wesenskonstituens] or sense of community as a oneness [Einigung] (OSG 34–36).
The oneness of community possesses both inner and outer aspects. I cannot here
analyze all that Walther contributes to the discussion of oneness, but I will high-
light important aspects relevant for the argument I wish to develop here about the
possibility of non-objectivated communities.9
In terms of the inner aspect of the lived experience of community, Walther is
aware that there exist both passive/unconscious aspects as well as more explicitly
conscious ones (OSG 37). The oneness of community is described as touching upon
various dimensions of the mental life of human beings: affectivity (psyche), the
unconscious, passive structures (habit), and consciousness (intentionality and sense).
No one dimension is privileged, and they all come with varying intensities of presence
or manifestation.
Deeply influenced by the psychological work of Alexander Pfänder, Walther
describes two psychic phenomena that correspond to the inner oneness of com-
munities (namely, feeling/affect and habit). One can experience a feeling of oneness,
of belonging to one community. The feeling of oneness can produce certain affects:
joy, happiness, sadness, distrust, etc. She describes it as “[a] warm, affirming emo-
8 Dan Zahavi has done much to draw attention to Husserl’s contributions to the topic. See Dan
Zahavi, Self -Awareness and Alterity (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999); The Phe-
nomenological Mind (with S. Gallagher) (London: Routledge, 2007); Subjectivity and Selfhood:
Investigating the First Person Perspective (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).
9 For a fuller analysis of Waltherian community see Antonio Calcagno, “Gerda Walther: On the
Possibility of a Passive Sense of Community and the Inner Time Consciousness of a Community,” in
a special volume dedicated to early phenomenology, ed. by Jeff Mitscherling and Kimberly Baltzer-
Jaray, Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie
continentale, Vol. 16, No. 2, Fall 2012, 89–105.
62 A. Calcagno
tional wave of greater or lesser force suddenly flooding, more or less abruptly and
violently or quietly and mildly, the whole subject or only a very ‘thin’ part of the
subject” (OSG 34). The subject experiencing the feeling of oneness is an I that feels
itself bound to the object-oneness [Einigungsobjekt] in a forceful, warm, and inten-
sive stream of feelings (OSG 35). Walther notes that the feeling of oneness usually
emerges from the background and not directly from the I itself, suggesting that I is
overwhelmed or overcome by a feeling of oneness (OSG 35). The I does not produce
the feeling, but undergoes it. Walther says that the I “has nothing to do with” (OSG
36) the feeling itself. There is a passivity of being overwhelmed by the feeling of the
lived experience of community.
Walther notes that, although one can experience being taken up in the feeling of
oneness, she cautions us not to think that this feeling arises out of nowhere and that
it comes about all of a sudden stricto sensu. In fact, in all probability the feeling of
oneness had been growing over time: she describes a Zusammenwachsen (OSG 36)
or a growth of the feeling of oneness over time that is both unconscious or minimally
or less conscious [unterbewußt] (OSG 36–37). She remarks:
Zur Einigung im weitesten Sinne können wir aber doch jedenfalls dies unbewußte, unterbe-
wußte Zusammenwachsen rechnen, es ist dann gleichsam ein Keimzelle, wenn auch nicht
der notwendige Ausgangspunkt, aller anderen Einigung und Gemeinschaft. Bei ihm spielt
das Ich, wie wir sahen, überhaupt keine Rolle, sei es aktiv oder passiv. Von einer Einigung im
engeren Sinne kann mann aber wohl erst sprechen, wo es sich um ein aktuelles Ich-Erlebens
handelt, das dann allerdings in ein habituelles Erlebnis übergehen kann (OSG 38).
Habitual forms of oneness are distinguished from unconscious or less conscious

forms of oneness by virtue of memory (OSG 37). According to Walther, in the case
of the latter one cannot presentify the role of the acting I and its role in experienc-
ing oneness, whereas in the case of the former the acting I can be presentifed as
remembering a habitual action in which it was present and in which it experienced a
habitual feeling of oneness. But does this mean that experiences of oneness to which
we are habituated are simply remembered lived experiences or memories? Walther
distinguishes habits from remembered feelings of oneness by arguing that in memory
one can observe that the I of the remembering person and the I of the remembered
feeling of oneness are not always identically the same: they are separated by time
and space. In habit one always returns to the same, identical I. She notes:
So unterscheidet die habituell gewordene aktuelle Einigung sich von der erinnerten Einigung
durch die Stellung zum Erlebnisquellpunkt—hier im Gefühlszentrum—, während es mit
ihr die gleiche Stellung zum Ich-Punkt hat, —der ja sowohl im erinnerten, als auch im
habituellen Erlebnis früher lebendig gelebt hat, aber mit dem wesentlichen Unterschied, daß
es beim habituellen Erlebnis wieder dasselbe identische Erlebnis durchleben kann, während
dies beim erloschenen, erinnerten Erlebnis wesensnotwendig ein-für-allemal ausgeschlossen
ist. Anderseits unterscheidet sich die habituell gewordene aktuelle Einigung vom bloßen
Zusammenwachsen durch die Stellung zum Ich, während es mit ihm die gleiche Stellung
zum Erlebnisquellpunkt hat (OSG 43).
Habits of feeling of oneness are important for community: they help keep com-
munities together, but the habitual feeling of oneness need not be marked by the full
presence of the I, as is the case with intentional, fully conscious, and meaningful
forms of community.10
Walther also describes habitual forms of Einigung as a particular category she calls
“Menschen, die auch” (that is, “human beings, who also …”) (OSG 69–70). There is
an inclusive form of community, which may not always be fully intentionally present
or its sense fully achieved, but which nonetheless contains within itself a oneness
that lies in the background of a social unity. Walther gives the example of human
beings, all of whom could be united in a common goal,11 a goal in which they can
all potentially take part:
Bei Menschen, die gerade auf Grund ihrer Wesensverschiedenheit, die sich doch ergänzt (wie
etwa manchmal bei Mann und Frau), sich einigen, liegt gewiß nur ein derartiges “auch” vor,
ein “auch” allerdings, das vielleicht außserdem noch auf die höhere Einheit beider hinwiest,
die potentiell in ihnen enthalen ist, die aber realisiert wird, wenn ist ein Gemeinschaft bilden
(OSG 69).
Walther describes this wider form of belonging as intentional and the proper or
foundational form of habitual oneness of the lived experience of community. The
primary characteristic of this habitual and intentional form of unity is not constituted
by an I that lives an experience, but a we that lives an experience as an “I along with
others.” She observes:
Diese “Menschen, die auch” sind stets irgendwie, wenn auch noch so unbestimmt, im Hin-
tergrund des Subjektes gegenwärtig. Es ist ihrer nicht nur dunkel inne, sondern es ist auch
geeint mit ihnen, in den Schichten, in denen es eben der Sinn der Gemeinschaft verlangt. Es
ruht in ihnen und gehört zu ihnen, sei es auch noch so lose und in einem noch so begrenzten
Teil seines Gesamtlebens—und sie “gehören zu ihm”—, es bildet mit ihnen ein “Wir”. Sein
Leben, soweit es eben Gemeinschaftsleben ist, ist nicht nur sein Leben, quillt nicht nur aus
ihm selbst, als Einzelindividuum, hervor, sondern es entspringt gleichsam aus seiner Einheit
mit den anderen in ihm. Das Erleben ist hier für das erlebende Subjekt charakterisiert, nicht
nur also “ich erlebe so”, sondern als: “wir erleben so”, “ich und die andern”— mit denen
ich geeinigt bin—“In mir erleben so” und wir sind eins in diesem unserem Erleben (OSG
69–70).
Walther’s analysis of intentional communities presents the fullest or highest form

of the lived experience of community. It is here that we move from a more psy-
chological account of community to a phenomenological one. Walther observes that
communal experiences need not be only between persons, as her fellow phenome-
nologists believed; she broadened the sense of community in that she believed that
10 See Emanuele Caminada, “Joining the Background: Habitual Sentiments behind We-
intentionality,” in Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents: Contributions to Social Ontology,

ed. by Anita Konzelmann Ziv and Hans Bernhard Schmid (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 195–212.
See also Hans-Bernhard Schmidt, Wir-Intentionalität: Kritik des ontologischen Individualismus
und Rekonstruktion der Gemeinschaft (Freiburg: Karl Alber, 2012), 135.
11 Edith Stein argues that communities are not identical with societies, which are more goal- or
purpose-oriented. Furthermore, communities, for Stein, are never experiences of fusion or what
Walther calls Verschmelzung; rather, they are a building up in individual subjects of a shared coher-
ence of sense or meaning of an experience of solidarity, where one lives in the life of another.
Walther differs from Stein in her view of the lived experience of community.
64 A. Calcagno
there could be communities between people and objects as well, including structures
of nature, landscapes, art objects, objects of science, religion, technology, God, etc.
(OSG 49). In short, Walther extends the experience of oneness to include human
persons and other non-human objects and domains. Intentional we-communities are
multiple and their members are ordered in three different ways. Members can stand
in relation to one another in three ways: (1) one member can be superior to or higher
than another member (for example, the leader of a community); (2) members can be
equal to one another (for example, they all equally work toward a common goal);
(3) members can be subordinated to one another (for example, one occupies a lower
position than another, say, in a religious community) (OSG 52–53).
The lived experience of belonging to the oneness of a community is constituted
in the grasping of a certain (noetic) sense of a social objectivity. The oneness of a
community is intentionally grasped when one understands that a person is one “with
and in” others (OSG 99–100). Walther argues that feeling one with another is not
the same as feeling the one of a community. There is a distinction insofar as the
latter is a wider, more encompassing experience. The essence of community consists
in the wider sense of oneness with a larger group of people or objects (OSG 63).
Oneness is constituted in four primary layers. First, there must be a subject of unity
[Einigungssubjekt] (OSG 64). The subject is necessary to experience and undergo
the experience of communal oneness. Second, there is at the personal level an object
of unity [Einigungsobjekt], an object that intentionally relates to and anchors the
subject. The object fulfills the intention of the subject that is trying to make sense of
what it is experiencing in the lived experience of community (OSG 64). Third, there
must be a widening of the feeling of oneness that moves beyond the object and subject
such that the oneness experienced must encompass others, thereby broadening the
sense of the unity. Finally, the complete and full experience of the oneness of subject
and object must come to “rest” and be “enrooted” or “anchored” in subjects (OSG 64).
The collective or communalized subjects Walther calls “originary” or “first” subjects
describe a new form of communal subjectivity or we-subjectivity that emerges which
is distinct from the subjectivity of individual persons (OSG 65).
Thus far, I have discussed the inner aspect of community (that is, how it manifests
itself from within psyche and spirit). But Walther recognizes that community is not
only sustainable from within; community needs external, material, and historical
reality to exist. The external reality that makes possible a community Walther calls
the “life of the community” (OSG 66). How the community lives and acts an und
für sich, how it externalizes or makes itself manifest, conditions the experience of
oneness. There are two primary ways that we can grasp the life of the community:
through knowledge and social acts. Knowledge is distinguished from the conscious
awareness of the oneness that characterizes a community (OSG 95). Drawing upon
Hegel and Weber, Walther argues that knowledge about a community consists of the
particular super-individual traits that mark both the subjective and objective spiritual
life of a particular community. For example, the life of a political party or a people,
their histories, desires, wills, etc.—these all manifest a communal reality of a group:
Es ist ein wesentlicher Gesichtspunkt in der ontologischen Klassifikation, wie in der his-
torischen Entwicklungsgeschichte der Gemeinschaft, Grad und Umfang dieses Willens
festzusetllen. Dieser Punkt ist von so durchgreifender Bedeutung, daß wir bei ihm etwas
näher dieses Wissen erlangt. Es ist … eine eigenaratige, neu Gegenständlichkeit, eine syn-
thetische, kollektive Gegenständlichkeit, die sich hier im Bewußtsein konstituiert … Die
Verbundenheit der Menschen als solche und der Sinn dieser Verbundenheit ist es, der sich
hier gleichsam von den Menschen, als ihre Trägern, ablöst, als neue, eigenartige Gegen-
ständlichkeit sui generis, die ihrem eigenen Sinn, ihr eigenes Sein und ihre eigenen Gesetze
hat, wenn sie auch andererseits unbestreitbar nur in den einzelnen Mitgliedern und ihrer
Wechselwirking bestehen und erfaßt warden kann—sowohl von innen wie auch von außen
… Erst wo dieses Wissen um die Verbundenheit, die Gemeinschaft als solche, als in gewissem
Sinne übergeordnetes und alles durchdringendes Ganzes in einer Gemeinschaft bei inhren
Mitgliedern auftaucht, können wir im engsten und vollsten Sinn von einer Gemeinschaft
“für sich” sprechen (OSG 97–98).
The second and important way that a community manifests itself in the world is
through its social acts. Walther concentrates her analysis on two social acts, which
can be understood as collective speech acts, following Reinach, or even performa-
tives, understood in the sense of Austin and Searle. When a community acts Im Sinn
(for the purpose of, in accordance with the wishes of, in the interests of) or Im Namen
(in the name of) (OSG 103), these speech acts manifest a collective intentionality and
that a community is speaking or expressing itself. The aforementioned acts require
individual persons to speak and pronounce them, but the private person speaking and
performing these social acts becomes a communal speaker and articulates or promul-
gates a communal act. Walther gives the law and parliament as two examples of how
social acts manifest themselves. She even discusses the debates in the Swedish par-
liament over whether the king should become a mere figurehead, ultimately making
way for a republican constitution (OSG 105).
The Possibility of a Non-intentional Communal We
While Gerda Walther mentions both the affective and habitual sides of community,
which presuppose a non-fully developed view of intentionality, understood as oper-
ating within the meaning framework of noesis and noema, she also posits strictly
non-intentional communities (that is, communities who know they share a specific
Einigung, but for whom there is no intentional object). Love communities are the
classic example of such communities. The love between lovers can never be objec-
tivated, albeit one sees the effects or traces of the love. For example, lovers buy for
one another and exchange gifts as tokens of their love for one another, but the love
for one another is not identical to the gifts exchanged. But how can there exist inten-
tional communities that do not possess the traditional constituting noesis (subject-
knower) and noema (object) structure of intentional consciousness, especially given
that Walther discusses these kinds of communities just after her intentional analysis
of community? Walther writes:
66 A. Calcagno
Es ist jedenfalls klar, daß die intentionale Fundierung der Einigung und der gemeinsame
Gegenstand in engsten Zusammenhang miteinander stehen, wenn sie auch vielleicht nicht
immer ganz zusammenfallen müssen. Aber ist den überhaupt in der order neben der inten-
tionalen Fundierung der Einigung und Wechseleinigung der Mitglieder eine gemeinsame
intentionale Gegenständlichkeit nötig, die als Leitmotiv ihr gemeinsames Leben durchzieht?
(OSG 66–67).
Walther calls communities that have no “external” intentional object (noema)

reflexive communities (OSG 67). Examples of such communities include family,
friendships, and marriages. She says that these types of communities have no exter-
nalized purpose or goal that bind their members, such as a banking society whose
goal is to generate profit. Walther suggests that the members of a reflexive commu-
nity are not unified according to a specific goal or achievable end. It seems that this
claim is right: a family can intend or desire to achieve many goals or purposes, but
it would be implausible to think that such goals alone define the unity of a family.
The same can be said about friendship and marriage. Walther says that reflexive
communities have in and of themselves their own purposes or goals, what she calls
(Selbstzweck) (OSG 67). In particular, the goal they have is to live out their own lives
and communal unities:
Ziel des gemeinsamen Lebens ist es hier, die Einigung und Gemeinschaft der Mitglieder
“auszuleben”, zu erweisen, zu vertiefen, zu entfalten und zu erhalten. U.E. kann mann, weil
die Gemeinschaft sich hier in ihrem Sinn auf sich selbst zurückwendet, jedoch nicht sagen,
daß sie keinen gemeinsamen Sinn, keine Leitgegenständlichkeit hätte, dies ist nur hier kein
äußerer, außerhalb der Gemeinschaft und ihrer Mitglieder als Person liegender Gegenstand
oder Sinn. Solche Gemeinschaften, man könnte sie reflexive Gemeinschaften nennen, wegen
ihrer Rückbeziehung auf sich selbst, haben eben nur einen derartigen Gegenstand von ganz
besonderer Art (OSG 67).
Key in Walther’s analysis are the self-reference and openness of purpose of reflex-
ive communities. An example of a non-objective community could be a long-lasting
friendship between old school mates: there is no one outward or external sign or
social reality that fully embodies the sense of the friendship (that is, the friendship is
not reducible simply and only to one act, convention, institution, or speech act that
embodies the friendship). One can imagine an intense and long-lasting friendship
in which there is no declaration of friendship: the parties involved in the friendship
simply live it out in a very intimate way, perhaps at the level of sheer affection. The
friends are friends insofar as they continue to relate to one another as friends in what-
ever form that friendship may take over time. The friendship is not embodied as the
community of a political party with its formal declarations and institutional supports.
The same non-fully intentional, non-objective sense could be seen to be true with
family members. The love between brothers or sisters cannot always be necessarily
demonstrated or understood through specific meaning structures and conventions. In
a regular speech act (for example, marriage) the oneness of the couple as pronounced
in the promise made by both individuals performs or effectuates publicly a unity:
the speech act of the promise of marriage makes objective the unity of the married
couple. But, in the phenomenological account of the relationship between lovers the
whole of their unified relationship cannot be objectivated fully, for the sense of the
union transpires over time and keeps evolving: every objective description of the
meaning of that unity can never be fully objectivated by intentional consciousness.
We have here what Jean-Luc Marion calls a saturated phenomenon. In her discus-
sion of non-objective forms of community, Walther makes room for very intense
and intimate communities that are not fixed or localizable in an external noetic or
objective form: the oneness of these communities is not fully graspable or reducible
to specific outward and intended objects that can be experienced meaningfully in
conscious lived experience. But, is this always the case for the specific forms of
non-intentional communities identified above? I believe that Walther’s claim must
make room for the possibility of some form of objectivity, albeit not a fully formed
one, for without such an objective prefiguration one could never be aware of the
very experience of non-intentional we-experiences like love and friendship. In other
words, some objectivated form of friendship or love must come to manifest itself for
us to recognize that we are living through some kind of communal relationship, even
though we may not be capable of fully grasping the whole of the phenomenon and,
therefore, unable to make present its full Sinn or sense.
Phenomenologically speaking, before the fullness of meaning or sense [Sinn] is
achieved, we know that there are hyletic or passive structures (for example, Empfind-
nisse or sensory impressions like pleasure and pain) that enable meaning to form.
Walther discusses habit and affectivity as key structures that help us understand the
meaning of the lived experience of community. The feeling of oneness, we learned,
is not only fully present as lived in the moment, here and how, but it builds over
time: Walther says that there is an unconscious or passive building of the feeling
over time. Affects, be it joy or sadness, for example, manifest in the body. Empathy
can be deployed to understand the experience of the other (OSG 85). Presumably,
through empathy we can bring into relief, to borrow Edith Stein’s expression, the
sense of a particular affect (for example, the loving gaze or the erotic attraction of
a community of lovers for one another). Embodied affects and the grasping of them
in the other can partially objectivate the love of one individual for another, albeit
the affect alone cannot wholly objectivate the lived experience of a non-intentional
we-community. We can call such objectivated affects moments of love constitutive of
a we-community. Affects and their embodiment, as they are grasped in and through
empathy, allow us to objectify the meaning of a lived experience of community.
But, affects alone do not only allow us to partially objectivate non-intentional we-
communities. Habits also allow us to objectivate the social bond of love. In a love
relationship, lovers form habits of togetherness which are conditioned by certain
memories and expectations. A lover knows how to contort his or her body in order
that lovers can lie together in a comfortable and usual way to enjoy watching a certain
television program, for example. Lovers are familiar with the particular movements,
heart beats, and comfort zones of one another. Lovers expect to or anticipate a certain
habitual movement that marks their love relationship, a habitual behavior that is
exclusive to them and no one else. Their body memory informs habits of being
together and what is comfortable and regular. Lovers embody a certain habituated
form of being together, especially around certain activities or events. Embodied
habits between friends or lovers take on certain shapes, practices, and forms in the
68 A. Calcagno
lived body, setting up certain expectations, bodily movements, and positions. One
knows, then, depending on how people sit, stand, or lie together, that these persons are
lovers—a knowledge achieved through the trading places of analogous experience
in empathy. Habits can embody or make visible a behavior that objectivates the love-
relation, thereby making it intentional and presentifiable as sense. Merleau-Ponty’s
discussion of the body schema and Husserl’s work on passive synthesis can certainly
be invoked here as giving credence to the aforementioned possibilities.
Furthermore, I argue here that there are particular speech acts, institutions, and
institutional practices that can serve as objective correlates of reflexive communi-
ties in that they establish certain expectations, habitual behaviors, practices, and
affective dispositions. In the case of marriages or friendships, for example, there are
often particular speech acts (namely, declarations and promises12 ), which do objec-
tively perform an intended communal oneness. For example, when one makes certain
promises in marriage and when these promises are recognized by a community of
witnesses, and when the promises impose certain habitual expectations on the part of
the members of the marriage and call for certain actions or responses of one member
to another, then one can objectively intend the sense of what a marriage could be. For
example, if one pledges to be faithful and love the other person in both sickness and
health, this creates certain obligations and expectations on both parties, especially
when such declarations are made by members to a larger community in which the
marriage can be situated (for example, a Church community). When others witness
the practice or performance of the promise, and when one lives out the promise,
one can intend the object that is marriage. This performance or execution of the
promises of language is similar to the declarations of friendship. When friendship
is declared and acknowledged by members in a friendship, then the living out or
performance of this friendship can be recognized and understood as particular unity
by the very enactment or performance of the habitual expectations and obligations
of the declaration of friendship. For example, in the declaration of friendship one
promises to love the friend and help the friend when in need. When situations arise
where friendship is challenged or is called for the continual performing of what was
promised and declared to be the case, always within the framework of a community
of friends, this performance manifests an objectivity that can be seized and grasped
as an intentional correlate of the intended sense of friendship. The friend who always
habitually responds to the sickness of a friend (by helping her carry out the friend-
ship) performs what is objectively entailed by a certain declared form of friendship
(that is, helping another person in need can be considered an outward, objective sign
of friendship): we understand the sense of the help as not only a state of affairs but
as a social act that can be set within a repeated meaning structure called friendship
or, more specifically, a reliable friend. The repeated and expected act of help itself
can be an object, an object that embodies the friendship. The act, in this case, entails
12 Both Adolf Reinach and John Searle take up and discuss the performative aspect of promises and
the role they play in constructing social reality. See Adolf Reinach, “Die apriorischen Grundlagen
des bürgerlichen Rechtes,” in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. 1
(Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1913), 685–847; John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New
York: The Free Press, 1995).
the helping hand of the friend but also the receptivity of the sick friend who calls for
help. Again, it should be remembered that the social act may be motivated by a gen-
uine declaration of love between friends. This repeated declaration and performing
of what the declaration or promise of friendship entails may be rationally motivated
in the sense that one follows through on what logically the promise made entails one
to do. The expectation of reliability and the habits associated with helping an ailing
friend embody a certain sense of a we-community that is intentional.
Institutions and their repeated and expected practices also give reflexive commu-
nities an objective status in the world—albeit the objective sense of these reflexive
communities may be limited, given the context in which such institutions and institu-
tional practices play themselves out. In particular, I refer to specific frameworks and
practices of the law, and specific cultural practices within any given society. The law,
especially tax law, often will specify what constitutes a family. Certain deductions
can be made from taxes, depending on whether or not one fits the given institutional
criteria of a given nation’s revenue agencies. Furthermore, certain religious or social
events may also posit certain practices and rituals that help identify what constitutes
a family or marriage in a given cultural context. For example, what a gay, lesbian,
trans, Roman Catholic, Mormon, Muslim, etc. family might look like can be objec-
tively understood through the intentional repetitive/habitual practices and laws of
states, religions, and cultures, etc.
Walther’s analysis of the non-intentional, non-objectivated reflexive communities
is based on a view of families, friendships, and marriages as not being reducible sim-
ply to the performatives of speech or the habits stemming from the life of institutions
and their practices. Yet, these speech and institutional frameworks also set lim-
its or configure determinations, through habits, expectations, and affects, that help
us understand what reflexive communities are: they provide and make objectivity
of reflexive communities possible. Sometimes, friendships, marriages, and families
actually follow the conventions performed in speech and live the institutional frame-
works of a given culture or people: they are thoroughly objectivated and do not have
the open, non-intentional structure that Walther sees as belonging to their essence.
Finally, Walther’s discussion of non-intentional, non-objectivated reflexive com-
munities challenges the whole constitutive possibility of sense or Sinn. The achieve-
ment of any sense implies the building up of perduring unity of cohesion (namely, the
unity of parts and wholes) that helps constitute sense in and through time. The sense
of community of family, marriage, and friendship is not capable of being achieved
or fulfilled—at least, in an objective phenomenological sense. Yet, one can identify
a specific sort of reflexive unity that belongs to the aforementioned social realities.
Walther leaves open the possibility that reflexive communities in their self-reflexivity
and self-purposiveness continue to have some unity of sense even though the unity
lived in such relationships is never able to be fixed or essentialized fully. The sense
that can be given or that arises from the habitual practices and affects of speech acts
and institutions, however, is fixed and is capable of being fulfilled. Walther’s analysis
cannot exclusively leave reflexive communities as having no intentional objectivated
sense; rather, it would be more accurate to say that sometimes the communal lives of
friendship, families, and marriages are not reducible to a specific given sense, but at
70 A. Calcagno
other times there are partially objectivated, intentional senses, especially in speech
and institutions, in affects and habits, that can be grasped. It is having both of these
possibilities, both intentional and partial non-intentional Einigungen, that can be said
to typify reflexive communities.
Antonio Calcagno is Professor of Philosophy at King’s University College, London, Canada. He

is the author of Giordano Bruno and the Logic of Coincidence (1998), Badiou and Derrida: Poli-
tics, Events and Their Time (2007), The Philosophy of Edith Stein (2007), Lived Experience from
the Inside Out: Social and Political Philosophy in Edith Stein (2014).
Human Beings as Social Beings: Gerda
Walther’s Anthropological Approach
Julia Mühl
Abstract This chapter focuses on Gerda Walther’s early works on social communi-
ties and the ego to clarify the following questions: Why do individuals want to create
a social community and why do they strive for connection with other human beings?
To answer these questions, I start with the basic assumption that Walther under-
stands human beings as social beings and I explain her concept of the human being.
I demonstrate that the constitution of the human being, for Walther, consists of three
parts: the ego or I-center, the self, and the fundamental essence of a human being. The
analysis of the human being permits one to delineate which of the aforementioned
constituent parts assists the individual to strive for social community and which parts
are crucial for deciding to enter into social community. I argue that only by examining
the essence of the individual is it possible to understand why persons wish to enter
into community. Hence, this chapter will illustrate the Waltherian development of
community that starts with the assumption that human beings are social beings who
strive for being a part of a community and for being combined with other individuals.
The development continues with the constitution of a human being, which consists
of three parts, and it ends with the formation of a social community. In the end, I
argue that Walther maintains the development from the individual to a community
that is grounded in the assumption that human beings are both social and communal
beings.
Keywords Social ontology · Social community · Social beings · Social drives

Ego
Introduction
Gerda Walther (1897–1977) was a German woman phenomenologist who worked

on such topics as the constitution of social communities, the ego, and mysticism. Her
published works include her PhD dissertation Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen
J. Mühl (B)
e-mail: julia.muehl@upb.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_6
72 J. Mühl
Gemeinschaften (1922), Phänomenologie der Mystik (1923), and her autobiography

Zum anderen Ufer (1960). This chapter will focus on her two early works; however,
it will also take a look at some of her unpublished manuscripts, which are part of her
Nachlass at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, Germany. In her dissertation
Walther investigates the essential characteristics of a social community. Walther
identifies the elements that constitute a social community and she establishes how
individuals are connected within a community. Her dissertation is an ontological
analysis of social communities. Moreover, she includes a phenomenological analysis
of social communities at the end of her work. Her second work, Phänomenologie
der Mystik, written while she was working on her dissertation, presents Walther’s
investigation of mystical experiences. In this work she analyzes the constitution of
human beings, especially persons, because Walther assumes that only persons can
have mystical experiences. Therefore, she undertakes a detailed analysis of the ego.
It is interesting to see that only one third of her book thematizes mystical experiences
and the spiritual connection with God. The main part of her work is devoted to an
analysis of the ego.
This chapter will deploy the aformentioned early works to answer questions that
arise when we look at Walther’s analysis of the ego and her theory of social com-
munities. The questions are: What is the reason why individuals want to be part
of a social community and why do they want to join with each other to create a
social community? The present chapter provides an insight into the issue. In her
book Phänomenologie der Mystik Walther writes that human beings are not able to
live without other human beings. They cannot develop fully if they are not in contact
with other beings and if they have no connection with them. In this case Walther
describes these human beings as “feral children” who live isolated from human con-
tact. In Walther’s view, human beings exist in a physical and soul-spiritual world,
which they share with each other (Walther 1976: 54). It is not possible to think of a
world consisting of isolated human beings who live on their own. Walther claims that
“Human beings are not windowless monads, as Leibniz says” (Walther 1976: 54).
Human beings want to be connected with other beings. In light of this argument, this
chapter wants to focus on the question why Walther states that individuals want to
be connected with other beings and why they strive for this connection. What is the
reason for individuals to create a social community? To clarify these questions, we
begin with the assumption that Walther understands human beings as social beings.
Section “Human Beings as Social and Communal Beings” presents Walther’s views
on this topic and demonstrates why this assumption is paramount for Walther’s the-
ory of social communities. Section “The Constitution of Human Beings” investigates
Walther’s concept of the human being. The constitution of a human being consists
of three parts: the ego or I-center, the self, and the fundamental essence of a human
being. In particular, I discuss the parts of the human being that make one strive for
being a part of a social community, and I also explore which parts are crucial for
making the decision to enter into a social community. Only by examining the indi-
vidual can we understand why individuals want to be part of a social community.
Ultimately, this chapter illustrates a progression, which starts with the assumption
that human beings are social beings, who strive to be part of a community and be
Human Beings as Social Beings: Gerda Walther’s … 73
combined with other individuals. The progression develops with the constitution of
a human being and it ends with the arrival at a social community. In the end we find
the development from the individual to community justified by the assumption that
human beings are social beings and communal beings.
Human Beings as Social and Communal Beings
Humans are social not because they live in a society. Humans can live in a society because
they are already and immediately social within their self-awareness. This means that they
each bear an essential psychic similarity with other members of their species. In this way, the
social is neither something between humans nor above them, but it is in them, such that the
social relation […] is already completely given in every individual consciousness1 (Adler
1913: 6).
In Gerda Walther’s view, human beings are social and communal beings. To obtain
a clearer understanding of Walther’s ideas on human beings as social beings, we
should examine some of Walther’s unpublished manuscripts, which are a part of her
Nachlass at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, Germany. These unpublished
manuscripts are very helpful in understanding Walther’s theory of social communi-
ties. In one of her unpublished manuscripts titled Zum Wesen der sozialen Gemein-
schaften (ANA 317, A III, 1.4), Walther refers to the quotation from Max Adler
presented at the beginning of this section. She uses this reference to demonstrate that
human beings are social and communal beings, who strive for connectedness with
other humans. The reason why human beings strive for connectedness with others is
itself the condition of the being of humans, as they are social beings.
As Max Adler wrote in his book Marxistische Probleme (1913), social behav-
ior [das Soziale] is part of the individual human being (Adler 1913: 6). The social
as a characteristic of human beings is engrained in every single individual. Hence,
society is not the bearer of social life, but is in the individual as a socialized person
[vergesellschafteter Mensch]. The socialized person is given to herself as a single
individual among many who have the same essence. She is a being that is connected
with other human beings to form a unity because they have the same kind of spir-
itual life2 (Adler 1913: 6). Thus, the human being strives for unity with its psyche
1 “Der Mensch ist sozial, nicht weil er in einer Gesellschaft lebt, sondern er kann in Gesellschaft
leben, weil er schon unmittelbar in seinem Selbstbewusstsein sozial ist, das heißt auf die Wesens-
gleichheit des Psychischen mit seinen Artgenossen bezogen ist. […] Auf diese Weise ist also das
Soziale weder etwas zwischen den Menschen, noch über ihnen, sondern es ist in ihnen, so dass der
soziale Zusammenhang, die Gesellschaft als Tatsache, nicht als Begriff, schon in jedem Einzelbe-
wusstsein vollständig gegeben ist” (Adler 1913: 6; translation my own).
2 “In Wirklichkeit aber scheint mir, dass wir das soziale Leben nirgends anders suchen können, als
wo es allein real gegeben ist: und das ist nur im Einzelmenschen der Fall. Nicht die Gesellschaft ist
der Träger des sozialen Lebens, sondern nur der Einzelmensch, aber freilich der Einzelmensch, wie
wir heute allein noch verstehen können: nämlich der als Einzelmensch zugleich vergesellschaftete
Mensch ist, das heißt der bereits aus seinem Ich heraus, aus seinem ganzen psychischen Sein, sich
selbst nicht anders gegeben ist wie als ein einzelner unter wesensgleichen vielen, als ein durch
74 J. Mühl
(Adler 1913: 8). The fact that Walther uses these references to Max Adler’s work
Marxistische Probleme clarifies that she has, similar to Adler, views on the consti-
tution of human beings as social beings. Moreover, by referring to Adler’s theory, it
could be assumed that Walther employs his theory as the basis for her own theories
aimed at the clarification of the question of how individuals strive for unity with other
individuals. This assumption arises because of another unpublished manuscript by
Walther (1917) titled Soziale Triebe (Noema und Noesis) (Ana 317, AIII, 1.6). In this
manuscript she explains that human beings have a social drive [sozialen Trieb], which
accounts for why individuals connect with others to form a social community. Social
drives are the drives of unification, which aim at unifying different essences within
other human beings. Walther describes them as follows, “[Social drives] looking for
‘kindred souls’; [they] aim at similar essences in other human beings” (Ana 317,
AIII, 1.6). Furthermore, she argues that the type of social community depends on
the type of essence toward which the social drive is directed. With the help of these
drives, individuals look for other human beings who have similar characteristics. As
we will see later in this chapter, these social drives are the precursors of Walther’s
concept of inner joining or unification. Only by possessing these social drives is it
possible for individuals to join with others and to be a part of a social community.
This aspect will become relevant for section “The Development from the Individual
to the “We”” in terms of understanding how individuals form a social community.
The Constitution of Human Beings
This section discusses Walther’s concept of the human being, which is necessary
to understanding human beings as social beings. In her work Phänomenologie der
Mystik, Walther decides to analyze the inner structure of human beings. In her view
human beings, especially persons, consist of three parts: the ego or I-center, the self,
and the fundamental essence of a human being.3 Persons also have a lived body,
which, in Walther’s view, is not something necessary for the essence of a person.
Therefore, Walther focuses on these three aspects of a person.
(a) Ego or I-Center
Walther starts her exploration with the ego or I-center. The ego is something that
lives and has lived experiences, it has consciousness, and it is directed, or it can be
directed toward different objects. Every single object is experienced intentionally
and has its own sense (Walther 1922: 2). The ego is the one who experiences. As
Walther observes:
die gleiche Art des geistigen Lebens mit seinen Artgenossen zu einer Einheit verbundenes Wesen”
(Adler 1913: 6; translation my own).
3 In her book Phänomenologie der Mystik, Walther only focuses on persons. How Walther defines
the concept of the person in this work is unclear. She does not extensively explain the concept.
Although I deploy the term “person” in this chapter, I cannot here undertake a full exposition of the
concept in Walther’s corpus.
[There] is a ‘point-zero’ [Nullpunkt] inside me, a point that radiates my experiences, which
seems to be sitting inwardly in the head […], which focuses on objects of any kind in a
conscious way while I experience. We want to call this ‘point’ I-point or the I-center. […] It
is the experienced starting point of our consciousness, our aiming at objects in a conscious
way, whatsoever nature this aiming may be (thinking, desiring, loving, hating or whatever)4
(Walther 1976: 36).
According to Walther, the ego is capable of intentionality. Walther distinguishes

two different kinds of conscious beings that are directed toward objects: namely,
psychic and spiritual being. Both experience consciousness in different ways and the
ego plays different roles in each form of being. Psychical beings, such as animals,
experience lived experiences in a random way: The lived experiences occur, and the
ego is directed to them, or the ego is directed at a lived experience and a new lived
experience arises, such that the ego switches to the new lived experience (Walther
1976: 36–38). Spiritual beings, such as human beings, on the other hand, have more
abilities. In Walther’s view, spiritual beings use the moment of attention or concen-
tration to focus on certain lived experiences. For example, someone looks out of
the window and observes passing pedestrians indifferently and disinterestedly. Sud-
denly, this person discovers someone who could be an acquaintance, and she directs
her attention to that person on the street. Walther observes, “Here it is, as if the ego
draws itself together internally, draws its own forces […] together from all directions
in which its attention was fragmented, as it intensifies its inner gaze with which it is
directed to the objects”5 (Walther 1976: 38). The fact that the ego turns its attention in
this example is a special act of the ego. It differs from the mere act of being directed
to an object and from the circumstance of being flooded with a lived experience
(Walther 1976: 38). This is the starting point for spiritual beings because the ego is
performing a free action in that moment. It is the beginning of self-determination
insofar as the ego is free and distinct from its lived experiences. It has the opportu-
nity to choose an object that receives the attention of the ego. The conscious I can
take a stand vis-à-vis the object. Walther remarks, “that the ego turns its attention
in a deliberate manner is a seed of freedom, thereby a seed of self-determination
of the ego towards the lived experiences and its contents. Therefore, it is a starting
point of the spirit”6 (Walther 1976: 39). The second and third differences between
4 “[Da ist] ein “Nullpunkt” in meinem Inneren […], gleichsam der Ausstrahlungspunkt meines
Erlebens, der wie im Kopf innerlich zu sitzen scheint […], der sich bei allem meinem Erleben
bewusstseinsmäßig auf alle möglichen Gegenstände […], richtet. Diesen “Punkt” wollen wir den
Ichpunkt oder das Ichzentrum nennen. […] [Er ist der] erlebte Ausgangspunkt unseres Bewusstseins,
unseres bewusstseinsmäßigen Hinzielens auf die Gegenstände […], wie auch immer dies innere
Hinzielen sonst noch geartet sein mag (denkend, begehrend, liebend, hassend oder wie sonst)”
(Walther 1976: 36; translation my own).
5 “Hier ist es, als ziehe sich das Ich selbst gleichsam innerlich zusammen, ziehe seine eigenen
Kräfte […] in sich aus allen Richtungen, in die seine Aufmerksamkeit zersplittert war, zusammen,
als intensiviere es seinen inneren Blick, mit dem es sich auf die Gegenstände richtet” (Walther 1976:
38).
6 “[…] die absichtliche Aufmerksamkeitszuwendung ist ein Keim der Freiheit, damit ein Keim der
Selbstbestimmung des Ich gegenüber den Erlebnissen und ihren Inhalten, damit ein Ansatzpunkt
des Geistes” (Walther 1976: 39; translation my own).
76 J. Mühl
psychical and spiritual beings lie in the concept of self-awareness and the idea that
spiritual beings have a spiritual core, which Walther calls a spiritual essence. Accord-
ing to Walther, self-awareness is an ability of spiritual beings. It is the capacity to
pull the ego out from its lived experiences to rise above them and to focus on these
lived experiences in self-awareness. The action of being directed toward an object in
self-awareness can happen in recognizing, judging, hating (self-hatred), loving, etc.
Nonetheless, this ability for self-awareness is not sufficient for the ego in itself to be
absolutely free of its lived experiences because it is conceivable that the ego thinks
about the lived experience while experiencing it, becoming completely absorbed by
the current of lived experience. Therefore, the ego needs the moment of will power
[Willensselbstmacht] (Walther 1976: 42–44) to break the force of the absorption.
The last difference between psychical and spiritual beings is that the latter have a
spiritual core, a spiritual essence, which can experience spiritual realities outside of
itself. Walther states that spiritual objects can only be detected by spiritual beings,
whereas psychical beings are not able to experience them. Walther maintains:
To the human person, a being who is also spiritually determined, belongs an I-center, which
can withdraw itself from the psychic, […] [and] this inner psychological-spiritual area, which
gives the ego a “solid ground” from which the internal psychic structure can be judged and
evaluated, especially within the framework of higher values, can shape “itself”7 (Walther
1976: 46).
The meaning of this spiritual essence will be discussed later when I take up the
different fundamental essences of a person.
(b) The Self
Walther starts her analysis of the self with a comparison:
If we compare the human person with an ancient lamp, the I-center is related to a burning
wick, which turns its light outwards and illuminates the surroundings. The wick floats on
the flammable liquid from which it draws its force to shine, [and] to burn. Within this liquid
it can move more or less freely. This corresponds to the “subconscious,” the inward psychic
“embedding,” the “self” […]. If the flame is calm, the liquid clear enough, the light is able to
shine into it, brighten it, so that one is able to see how it is arranged inside […]. Everything
is surrounded by a vessel, the lamp in a narrow sense, it resembles the lived body in which
we are seated as psychological-mental beings8 (Walther 1976: 47).
7 “Zu der menschlichen Person, also einem Wesen, das auch geistig bestimmt ist, gehört neben
dem Ichzentrum, das sich dem seelischen Getriebe entziehen kann, […], zweifellos dieser innere
seelisch-geistige Bereich, der dem Ich auch den “festen Grund” geben dürfte, von dem aus es das
innere Getriebe beurteilen und bewerten, im Sinne höherer Werte “sich selbst” gestalten kann”
8 “Vergleichen wir die menschliche Person mit einer altertümlichen Lampe, so ist das Ichzentrum
dem brennenden Docht verwandt, der sein Licht zunächst nach außen sendet und die Umgebung
erhellt. Der Docht schwimmt auf der brennenden Flüssigkeit […], aus der er seine Kraft, zu leuchten,
zu brennen, schöpft. Innerhalb dieser Flüssigkeit kann er mehr oder weniger frei sich bewegen. Diese
entspricht dem “Unterbewusstsein”, der innerseelischen “Einbettung”, dem “Selbst”, […]. Ist die
Flamme ruhig, die Flüssigkeit klar genug, so vermag das Licht auch in sich hinein zu leuchten, sie
zu erhellen, so dass man zu erkennen vermag, wie sie im Inneren beschaffen ist […]. Das Ganze
ist von einem Gefäß umschlossen, eben der Lampe im engeren Sinn, sie gleicht dem Leib, in den
wir als seelisch-geistige Wesen hineingesenkt sind” (Walther 1976: 47; translation my own).
Fig. 1 Relation between

lived body, self, and I-center
lived body
self
I-
center
Walther demonstrates that the I-center takes its force from the self, which is an
inward psychic background in which the ego is embedded (Walther 1976: 47; Resch
1983: 38). Usually, the I-center is directed to the external world, to objects, which lie
outside the person, but it is also possible that the I-center is directed inward toward
the self. According to Walther, “we have an experiencing ego in the foreground
of consciousness that is embedded in an inward psychic background a tergo [from
behind], in a manner that cannot be defined conceptually”9 (Walther 1976: 51). Within
this background various lived experiences flow to the ego. Within some spheres of
this background, inner total settings are given, from which single lived experiences
of the current of lived experiences rise10 (Walther 1976: 51). Figure 1 illustrates the
relation between the lived body, the I-center, and the self.
(c) The Fundamental Essence of a Person
In addition to the ego an d the self, there is equally a fundamental essence of a person.
The essence is the soul-spiritual core of the personality of a person (Walther 1976:
49). The question that Walther wishes to answer is: How can we recognize or grasp
the essence of a person? In Walther’s view it is not sufficient to recognize or grasp
the essence in an indirect way, for example, by investigating lived experiences and
the objects toward which they are directed (Walther 1976: 49). Walther claims that
there must be a direct way to grasp the essence of a person. The problem here is
that not every lived experience arises from the essence of a person. Furthermore, the
personal essence need not show itself in every lived experience. Since the essence
is shown only in certain lived experiences, it can only be examined with the help
of an analysis of its background [Hintergrundsanalyse] and an investigation of its
source or foundation [Quellgrunduntersuchung] (Walther 1976: 51). This analysis
demonstrates that not every lived experience that is immersed in the foundation of
9 “Wir haben da ein erlebendes […] Ich im Vordergrundsbewusstsein, das in einer nicht näher
begrifflich festzulegenden Weise in einen innerseelischen Hintergrund “a tergo” eingebettet ist”
10 “Aus diesem Hintergrund strömen dem Ich in verschiedener Weise alle möglichen Erlebnisse zu, in
die verschiedenen Sphären dieser Einbettung scheinen die inneren Gesamteinstellungen eingesenkt
zu sein, aus denen die einzelnen Erlebnisse des Erlebnisstromes sich jeweils emporheben” (Walther
1976: 51; translation my own).
78 J. Mühl
the person [Quellgrund] leads back to the essence. To understand the concept of the
fundamental essence in a better way, Walther compares it to the center of a sphere:
If we illustrate the fundamental essence as the center of a sphere, as if they [the lived
experiences] flowed out either from the center point as a radius that extends from the center
to the periphery of the sphere or from any point that lies on the radius within this sphere, but
not from the center itself, one might perhaps say that all these kinds of lived experiences can
emerge from the fundamental essence, but not all individual lived experiences of this kind
actually do in all cases11 (Walther 1976: 94).
There exist other sources for lived experiences besides the fundamental essence,
which is the reason why it is hard to delineate which lived experiences emerge from
the fundamental essence of a person and which do not (Walther 1976: 52).
Walther proceeds to explain the various sides of a fundamental essence. The
fundamental essence consists of three parts: body, soul, and spirit (Walther 1976:
94). Depending on the part focused on, the fundamental essence is represented in
a different way (Walther 1976: 97). However, they are all interwoven and mutually
imbricated (Walther 1976: 95). The essence as a body is the most concrete, most
obvious [sinnfälligste], and the lowest aspect of a personality (Walther 1976: 100).
The bodily side of the essence interacts intensively with the soul without being
identical to the former (Resch 1983: 41). Along with the bodily side of the essence,
there is the fundamental essence as a soul, which includes the area within a human
being that can be situated between the bodily side and the spiritual side (Resch 1983:
41). The soul shows itself in lived feelings and emotional lived experiences, as well
as in wishing and striving [im Wollen und Streben] (Walther 1976: 111). These lived
experiences rise sensibly from below, as from the heart (Walther 1976: 112). The
last side is the fundamental essence as a spirit. This side is a spiritual sphere of
light, which is inside a human being. It points beyond itself to a spiritual, primordial
source. The human being experiences himself under certain circumstances as a part
of a spiritual world (Walther 1976: 122). This essence as a spirit enables a spiritual
being to experience a spiritual reality that lies beyond the person’s own being (Resch
1983: 40). With this explanation of the person and its particularities, Walther comes
to the conclusion that a human person comes to full development when she strives for
harmony between her body and her soul-spiritual existence (Resch 1983: 43). Even
if Walther describes the spiritual aspect of the fundamental essence as something
higher, which only human beings possess, it is not possible to grasp the fundamental
essence only in terms of objective spirit. Spirit requires an object that arouses the
lived experiences that emerge from the fundamental essence through which the ego
attains its own recognition (Walther 1976: 131). Therefore, the existence of a non-
11 “Es ist, wenn wir uns das Grundwesen als den Mittelpunkt einer Kugel veranschaulichen, als
strömten sie aus dem Mündungspunkte eines vom Zentrum kommenden Radius in der Oberfläche,
oder aus irgendeinem noch weiter innen auf einem Radius gelegenen Punkte im Inneren der Kugel
hervor, aber nicht aus dem Mittelpunkt selbst. Man könnte also vielleicht sagen, dass alle diese
Erlebnisarten aus dem Grundwesen hervorgehen können, aber nicht alle Einzelerlebnisse dieser
Art das auch tatsächlich in bestimmten Einzelfällen immer tun” (Walther 1976: 94; translation my
own).
Fig. 2 Relation between

I-center, self, and person
fundamental essence
fundamental self
essence
I-
center
needs needs
the I- the self
center
ego is necessary to grasp the fundamental essence of a person. The non-ego serves
as a contrast or a counterpart:
First, the total dedication of human beings to a transcendent inner or external “otherworldly”
object is necessary in learning, viewing, loving, valuing, [etc.] and [this object itself] is the
first and supreme precondition for seeing its own fundamental essence12 (Walther 1976:
133).
But, the presence of the non-ego, which can be other human beings or other objects
of the external world, is only the essential genetic precondition for directly grasping
the fundamental essence. Looking back at the fundamental essence as the source of
lived experiences, a human being can see its fundamental essence in an unveiled and
original way (Walther 1976: 133).
As we have seen in this section, Walther analyzes the constitution of a person
and divides it into three parts: the ego or I-center, the self, and the fundamental
essence of a person. In conclusion, it can be said that the I-center takes its force
from the self, which is an inner, psychic background in which the ego is embedded.
The fundamental essence, however, is the soul-spiritual core of the personality of a
human being, which can only be grasped with the help of the non-ego. It requires
self-awareness, and self-determination or self-power of the I-center, so that it can
realize itself and become what it is supposed to become13 (Walther 1976: 135). The
I-center, however, is independent of the fundamental essence (Walther 1976: 137).
Figure 2 represents the relation between the I-center, the self, and the fundamental
essence of a person.
12 “Zunächst ist […] die völlige Hingabe des Menschen an einen transzendenten innerlich oder
äußerlich “jenseitigen” Gegenstand in Wissen, Schauen, Lieben, Werten und dergleichen und damit
dieser selbst die erste und oberste Vorbedingung für seine Erschauung des eignen Grundwesens”
13 “Tatsächlich liegt die Sache so, dass beim Menschen als Person, als personalem Wesen, das
Grundwesen eben der Selbsterkenntnis und Selbstbestimmtung, Selbtsmacht des Ichzentrums

bedarf, um das zu warden, was in ihm angelegt ist, um sich selbst zu verwirklichen” (Walther
1976, 135; translation my own).
80 J. Mühl
The Development from the Individual to the “We”
In Walther’s view the development from the individual to the “we” takes place in
the context of social communities. The individual enters into one or more social
communities and becomes a part of the “we.” As we have already seen, there are
two reasons why individuals want to enter into social communities. The first reason
is the predisposition of human beings for community: Human beings have social
drives (soziale Triebe) that lead us to strive for the connection with other human
beings who have similar essences. The second reason is the fundamental essence of
a person: The human being needs a non-ego for developing and recognizing its own
personality. It can do this by connecting itself with other human beings to recognize
or grasp its own fundamental essence. Other human beings are perceived in terms of
contrast, thereby rendering possible a comparison with other human beings. Let us
now explore how a social community is created, and how individuals become a part
of the “we.”
Inner Joining or Inner Unification
The individual connects with others to form a social community through the concept
of inner joining or inner unification. This concept is the essential characteristic of
a social community. For the establishment of a social community, however, the
following conditions must be satisfied. First, social communities must exist between
human beings. Second, the members of social communities must know each other.
Third, they are in an intentional correlation with each other. Finally, the members of
a social community are related to an intentional object. These conditions form the
basis of a life in common (Walther 1922: 29–30). If the conditions are fulfilled, the
members of a community live together. Although these are preconditions for a social
community, the essential characteristic is the concept of inner joining. It is a feeling of
togetherness and belonging. It is a feeling and not an act of cognition [Erkenntnisakt]
or judgment [Urteil]14 (Walther 1922: 34). Walther describes inner joining as a
peculiar inner-psychological connection [inner-seelisches Sich-verbinden] with an
intentional object:
This unification is, at first, a present lived experience, an act emanating from the I-point
in which it lives now. The I-point stretches toward its object of unification and connects
with it in a more or less powerful, warm and intense stream of feeling that emerges from
the background, enters into the ego, […] and now brings it to the object of unification in
14 “EinGefühl sagten wir, es ist also nicht ein Erkenntnisakt oder ein Urteil, wie wenn etwa jedes
Mitglied der Gemeinschaft (innerlich oder äußerlich-ausdrücklich) feststellte oder behauptete, dass
es nun diese anderen Mitglieder als zu sich gehörig betrachtet, sich mit ihnen für vebunden hält
[…]” (Walther 1922: 34; translation my own).
an intentional way. The ego persists, then, in a continuous calm as long as the unification
lasts15 (Walther 1922: 35).
This present unification is the starting point for creating a social community.
Nonetheless, the individual’s desire to join others is not sufficient for the consti-
tution of a community. It is required that every subject wants to join with all the
other members of a community so that there is a reciprocal effect of one member
on the other (Walther 1922: 63; Calcagno 2012: 94). Thus, it can be stated that a
social community is constituted by inner joining of individuals. Importantly, only
the reciprocal effect of inner joining is what Walther calls a “social community.”
The special feature of Walther’s concept, however, is that the present unification can
become a habitual one. That means that the ego is no longer constantly directed to
its intentional object of unification (Walther 1922: 38). But, how can the present
unification become a habitual one? Walther explains:
Something quite particular takes place there! It is as if the current of unification flowed back
into the center of feelings, as though the current were objectively saturated […] and this
current is taken into the spiritual subject, behind the I-point, into the very sources of these
lived experiences in the self16 (Walther 1922: 39).
The lived experience of the unification takes its object mentally and intentionally
into the self (Walther 1922: 41). Thus, the individual experiences the present unifi-
cation with another individual and either enters into a social community or creates
one. In the case of habitual unification the individual carries the other in herself
such that she remains connected, even if the ego is directed to other objects. This
act of inner joining, however, can be carried out because of the predisposition that
human beings have for social drives. They are the reason why human beings strive
for connectedness with others and they are the precondition for inner joining.
We-Experiences
The aforementioned concept of we-experiences is important for the continuance of a

social community. Only through such lived experiences does the individual become a
part of the social community. We-experiences arise by living in a social community, as
well as by means of reciprocal inner joining between individuals. They derive from a
15 “Es ist diese Einigung zunächst ein aktuelles Erlebnis, ein vom Ich-“Punkt” ausgehender Akt, in
dem er jetzt lebt. Der Ich-“Punkt” streckt sich hier hin zu seinem Einigungsobjekt und verbindet sich
mit ihm in einem mehr oder weniger wuchtigen, warmen und intensiven Gefühls“strom”, der, aus
dem Hintergrund auftauchend, in das Ich eingeht […] und es nun intentional zum Einigungsobjekt
hinträgt. In diesem verharrt dann das Ich seelisch in kontinuierlicher Ruhe solange die Einigung
dauert” (Walther 1922: 35; translation my own).
16 “Es ist etwas ganz Eigentümliches, das sich da abspielt! Es ist, als flute der Einigungsstrom
wieder zurück ins Gefühlszentrum, als wäre er nun aber von einem Etwas an seinem Gegenstand
durchtränkt […] und dies würde nun mitgenommen in das psychische Subjekt hinein, “hinter” den
Ich-Punkt, in die Quelle dieses Erlebnisses im Selbst” (Walther 1922: 39; translation my own).
82 J. Mühl
common layer within a social community, which Walther calls Gemeinschafts-Selbst

[the communal self] (Walther 1922: 74). We-experiences mean that every individual
can receive experiences of others within themselves by inner joining. Walther gives
an account of the way we-experiences operate:
[M]y experiences are actually lived in my I-center, they stream toward it from my
consciousness-background, from my self, in which my I is embedded. Though in this embed-
ment, in this background, from which these lived experiences arise, I am not alone as “myself”
[…] but I have taken the others inside into the background, I intentionally received them
beyond my I-center in my self (or they grew up in it by themselves) and I feel myself at
one, I feel myself joined with them (unconsciously, automatically or because of an explicit
joining)17 (Walther 1922: 71; Caminada 2014: 205).
Furthermore, Walther observes:

I live and experience at the same time through myself and through them in me, through “us.”
Well before these experiences come to the fore of the I-point, before they are actualized, they
are lived experiences of the community, because they already arise as motions [stirrings]
from me and the others in me (Walther 1922: 71).18
To understand how present we-experiences arise from inner joining, Walther car-
ries out a structural analysis, which consists of four steps that form the whole of
we-experiences:
1. Experience of “A”, who is intentionally directed toward an object;
1a. Experience of “B”, who is similarly intentionally directed toward the same
object.
2. Empathic experience of “A”, who empathizes with the experience of “B” (1a);
2a. Empathic experience of “B”, who empathizes with the experience of “A” (1).
3. Joining act of “A” with the act of “B” (or with him) whom “A” empathically
experiences;
3a. Joining act of “B” with the act of “A” (or with him) whom “B” empathically
experiences.
4. Empathic experience of “B”, who experiences that “A” has joined his act (or
him);
4a. Empathic experience of “A”, who experiences that “B” has joined his act (or
him) (Caminada 2014: 207; Schmid 2012: 132; Walther 1922: 85).
17 “[M]eine Erlebnisse vollziehen sich aktuell in meinem Ichzentrum, sie strömen ihm aus meinem
Bewußtseinhintergrund, meinem Selbst, in das es eingebettet ist, zu. Doch in dieser Einbettung,
in diesem Hintergrund, aus dem diese Erlebnisse hervorgehen, bin nicht nur ich allein als “ich
selbst”—bei dem Gemeinschaftserlebnissen, sondern ich habe die anderen ja mit in ihn herein-
genommen, ich habe sie hinter meinem Ichzentrum in mein Selbst intentional aufgenommen (oder
sie sind von selbst hineingewachsen) und ich fühle mich eins mit ihnen (unbewußt, automatisch
oder auf Grund einer ausdrücklichen Einigung)” (translated by Emanuele Caminada, see Caminada
2014).
18 “Ich lebe und erlebe aus mir selbst und aus ihnen in mir zugleich heraus, aus “Uns”. Schon ehe
diese Erlebnisse in den Ichpunkt eintreten, in ihm aktualisiert werden, sind sie also Gemeinschaft-
serlebnisse, denn sie entspringen ja schon als Regungen aus mir und den anderen in mir” (translated
by Emanuele Caminada, see Caminada 2014).
Walther seeks to show that each experiencing individual should experience inner
joining with other persons as well as grasp empathically the lived experiences of
another person so that everyone has the lived experiences of others inside them-
selves (Walther 1922: 85). However, only the habitual inner joining consolidates a
community life. This inner joining is a habitual resting in one another as members of
a community (Walther 1922: 69). This is the reason why social communities can exist
for a long time. Through two aspects of social community (namely, inner joining and
we-experiences) the individual enters or creates a social community and becomes a
continuous part of it. But, only the habitual moment makes the social community a
stable unit.19
Conclusion
The aim of this chapter was to demonstrate that Walther’s idea of a social and com-
munal being is the basis for her analysis of a social community. Walther understands
the human being as a being who is social and strives to connect with other human
beings. Her analysis of the constitution of human beings has shown that, on the one
hand, human beings have a natural disposition, which Walther calls social drives, to
be connected with others. On the other hand, human beings need a non-ego to develop
and recognize their own personalities, and this non-ego can be other human beings.
The section titled “The Development from the Individual to the “We”” explained the
transition from the individual to the “we,” which in Walther’s view is only possible in
the context of a social community. There exists the development from the individual
to the social community, and thus to the “we,” which is activated by the nature of
human beings as social beings.
References
Adler, Max. (1913). Marxistische Probleme: Beiträge zur Theorie der materialistischen Geschicht-
sauffassung und Dialektik. Stuttgart: J.H.W. Dietz.
Calcagno, Antonio. (2012). Gerda Walther: On the possibility of a passive sense of community and
the inner time consciousness of community. Symposium, 16(2), 89–105.
Caminada, Emanuele. (2014). Joining the background: Habitual sentiments behind we-
intentionality. In A. K. Ziv & H. B. Schmid (Eds.), Institutions, emotions, and group agents:
Contributions to social ontology (pp. 195–212). London: Springer.
Resch, Andreas. (1983). Gerda Walther. Innsbruck: Resch.
Schmid, Hans B. (2012). Wir-Intentionalität: Kritik des ontologischen Individualismus und Rekon-
struktion der Gemeinschaft (2nd ed.). Freiburg: Karl Alber.
Walther, Gerda (1917). Die sozialen Triebe (Noema und Noesis). Ana 317, AIII, 1.6. Munich:
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Unpublished manuscript.
19 For more information about the constitution of a social community see Julia Mühl (forthcoming).
“Meaning of Individuals within Communities: Gerda Walther and Edith Stein on the Constitution
of Social Communities”, in R. Hagengruber and S. Luft (eds.), Women Phenomenologists on Social
Ontology: We-Experiences, Communal Life, and Joint Action (Dordrecht: Springer).
84 J. Mühl
Walther, Gerda. (1922). Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften. Mit einem Anhang
zur Phänomenologie der sozialen Gemeinschaft. Max Niemeyer: Halle.
Walther, Gerda (1976). Phänomenologie der Mystik (3rd ed.). Olten: Walter Verlag.
Walther, Gerda (n.d.). Zum Wesen der sozialen Gemeinschaften. Ana 317, AIII, 1.4. Munich: Bay-
erische Staatsbibliothek. Unpublished manuscript.
Julia Mühl is a doctoral candidate and works as a Research Assistant at Paderborn University.
She started her studies in the teaching and research area of the History of Women Philosophers
and Scientists. She is completing her PhD on Gerda Walther’s dissertation Ein Beitrag zur Ontolo-
gie der sozialen Gemeinschaften (1921). She has given lectures and written papers on such topics
as Walther’s concept of a social community, inner joining, and the ego. She also specializes in
early phenomenology and social ontology. From 2016 to 2017 she was managing director of the
Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists funded by the Ministry of Culture
and Science of the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia at Paderborn University.
Körper, Leib, Gemüt, Seele, Geist:
Conceptions of the Self in Early
Phenomenology
Christina M. Gschwandtner
Abstract This chapter considers conceptions of the self in three early phenomeno-
logical thinkers: Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Edith Stein, and Gerda Walther. Although
colleagues or students of Husserl and influenced by his phenomenology, they devel-
oped their own phenomenology of the human person in explicit opposition to
Husserl’s more “idealist” turn. They remain, however, virtually unknown today in
philosophical circles. This chapter seeks to retrieve their philosophies of the human
being and suggests that their particular phenomenological approach still has much
to teach us, especially in the context of the conversation about the “self after the
subject” and the question of inter-subjectivity.
Keywords Phenomenology · Person · Hedwig Conrad-Martius · Edith Stein

Gerda Walther
The early phenomenological movement inspired by Edmund Husserl in Göttingen

and Freiburg included several prominent women. Hedwig Conrad-Martius was the
leader of a phenomenological working group in Göttingen, later joined by Edith Stein,
who was the first person to receive her doctorate under Husserl just after his move to
Freiburg. Gerda Walther originally studied with Alexander Pfänder in Munich and
then came to Freiburg to work with Husserl, while Stein was his assistant. While
other students of Husserl, such as Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink have received
far more attention, these female thinkers have been unjustly neglected, although they
did not slavishly follow Husserl, appropriating his method with no less critique and
C. M. Gschwandtner (B)
Fordham University, New York, NY, USA
e-mail: gschwandtner@fordham.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_7
86 C. M. Gschwandtner
creativity than Heidegger or Fink.1 Walther and Conrad-Martius have barely been
translated into English and Stein’s phenomenological writings have been dwarfed
by the religious interest in her conversion and martyrdom in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Yet, not only were they among the most active early phenomenologists—and taken
seriously by Husserl, Max Scheler, Adolf Reinach, and Roman Ingarden—but all
three also develop a unique phenomenological perspective on human subjectivity,
analyzing it in far more detail than Husserl himself did, at least in his works published
at the time. This chapter will lay out their phenomenological approaches to the
human self and suggest that they provide important insights that may well complicate
the—predominantly French—obsession with refiguring the “self” that “comes after
the subject.”2
Gerda Walther
We will begin with Walther because her analysis is the most straightforward.3 She
devotes several chapters in her Phänomenologie der Mystik to the human person,
trying to ascertain its most basic nature (Grundwesen) to give an account of expe-
rience, including the ability to distinguish between self-generated experience and
experience that comes from elsewhere. Walther treats the I (das Ich) as the center
of experience (des Erlebens). We experience ourselves first in our experience of the
world, which makes a core of the “self” separate from the world difficult to distin-
guish. Yet, the self-reference of experiencing assumes a basic, internal “zero point
of orientation” (Nullpunkt) that is directed toward the experience and illuminates it.
She calls this the “I-point” or “I-center.”4 We can distinguish between the experience
of the I and the I having or undergoing the experience (that is, we can examine both
1 Itis hard to tell to what extent gender plays a role here, but it is revealing that Jean Héring, for
example, who was instrumental in introducing phenomenology to France, extensively refers to
Conrad-Martius in his explication of phenomenology and speaks of her in the most positive terms,
yet only Scheler, Husserl, and later Heidegger find a voice in France; the women phenomenologists
are entirely ignored. This is obviously just as true of the Anglophone appropriation, where Husserl
and Heidegger play an outsize role and Stein, Walther, and Conrad-Martius are virtually unknown.
Both Stein and Walther attempted to pursue Habilitation with Husserl, but he stymied both efforts,
apparently supportive of the banning of women from professorships at German universities at the
time.
2 The title of an important collection edited by Eduardo Cadava and Jean-Luc Nancy, trans. as Who
Comes after the Subject? (London: Routledge, 1991).

3 Much of Walther’s work is unpublished and languishes in archives. I rely here on her main work
Phänomenologie der Mystik (Olten: Walter Verlag, 1955 [1923]). She was encouraged by Conrad-
Martius to present a second revised edition.
4 That is, the Ichpunkt or Ichzentrum (Walther, Phänomenologie, 36). She compares this “center of
the I” repeatedly throughout the book to an oil-lamp with a burning wick (see Walther, Phänomenolo-
gie, 47 for first mention). Sometimes, one wick can be fed by the liquid of two separate lamps or
the oil of two lamps can flow into each other if they become connected or two wicks can be found
in one lamp. These metaphors illustrate various ways in which one consciousness can interact with
another (through telepathy and mystical experience).
Körper, Leib, Gemüt, Seele, Geist: Conceptions … 87
its noetic and its noematic pole). Experiences are both generated by this core of the
self or come to it and affect it from the “outside.” In various conscious acts, the I can
exercise attention or effort, which point to its spirit (Geist) as a free experience of
intentionality or self-determination. It can also suppress experiences or ignore them;
thus, although it may not be able to generate certain experiences at will, it does have
an influence over experiences that come to it, at least regarding the attitude with
which it approaches them. Consciousness can direct itself intentionally toward expe-
rience in manifold ways. Consciousness has to be “present” in some way to what we
experience (that is, it has to be “corporeal” to feel corporeal sensation, be “spiritual”
to discern the movements of spirit; Walther, Phänomenologie, 45). The human being
therefore has “ein geistig-seelisch-leibliches Grundwesen,” unlike animals or other
beings (Walther, Phänomenologie, 46). The human psyche can also be open to the
experiences of others, which can be experienced within oneself as someone else’s
psyche intruding upon one’s own. After establishing this possibility (of interacting
with others, whether dead or alive, human or not), she goes on to examine more fully
the basic being (Grundwesen) of the self: as Leib [body], as Seele [soul], and as Geist
in Chaps. 8, 9, and 10, respectively.
Walther suggests that only some experiences come out of the ground of our being,
from its source (Quelle) or core (Kern). To distinguish the kinds of experience that
proceed from this core, she demarcates three aspects of the self, which belong together
and are not easily separated.5 The corporeal ground of being as Leib (not Körper)
should not be understood either as a prison of the soul or as the only “real” self.6
Leib is not pure material, but a living entity. Yet, Leib is only truly itself when it is
thoroughly permeated by both soul and spirit. She suggests that this often happens
naturally in children, while adults tend to withdraw the spirit into the head or mind
and only send it out into other parts of the body on occasion. Something similar
can occur with a soul confined to the heart rather than being poured out over the
entire body. This leads to a battle between the three parts, in which each goes its own
way and the Ichzentrum constantly has to alternate between them. Sometimes, one
part is lost entirely, either suffocated or withered away (for example, if the Leib has
become the only center of being, one becomes obsessed with food, sex, or bodily
prowess as in sports). She also distinguishes between different ways of permeation:
the soul permeates the body in terms of light (Durchleuchtung/Durchseelung), while
the spirit “glows” (Durchstrahlung/Durchgeistigung).7
5 Walther, Phänomenologie, 95. She tries several times to distinguish the human from the animal.
She admits “soul” (that is, emotion, affectivity) for animals, but not mind or spirit (Geist). At the
same time, she contends that whole eras or people might have lacked Geist entirely and that it only
awakes slowly in young people (that is, it must be cultivated and is not there as a naturally occurring
gift; Walther, Phänomenologie, 96). Although “spiritual” experience might be especially attuned
to it, she does not seem to think of it as limited to such experience.
6 That is, thinking of the soul as a mirage and the spirit as evanescent.
7 She also contends that the Greeks and their ideas of beauty perfectly understood the way in which
the soul permeates the lived body, but they ignored the higher permeation of the ensouled body
by the spirit (Walther, Phänomenologie, 102). Beauty is the expression of such illumination of the
body by soul and spirit: they are fully interwoven into the body (Walther, Phänomenologie, 103).
The second ground of being of the self is the soul, which refers to the “psychic”
reality of the self.8 This includes desire, emotion, affect, even rudimentary thinking.9
Feelings like love or joy can ascend from the very depth of one’s being, seemingly
from the “heart” but certainly not from the body. This source of feeling is “essen-
tially different” in the manifestation of its phenomenality from the physical heart.10
Encounters with a beloved person or with something highly valued call forth distinct
experiences in the “heart” (or soul). The self enters into the experience internally;
she describes this as a sort of submerging into the feeling to its very core where
one suddenly grasps its source and manner in consciousness in a kind of “flash”
(blitzartig).11 Although the object of this feeling need not be present to perception
but can be imagined or remembered, the I is turned toward it, devoted to it, lies or
even “rests” in it.12 This is hence a living, bodily (leibhaft) experience of the soul as
Grundwesen.13 Such feeling can be colored by the particularity of the person expe-
riencing it. It allows subject and object to coincide in a way that leads to the ground
of the self as soul. She identifies this also as the source of the “aura” of a person in
occult experiences (Walther, Phänomenologie, 117).
Finally, the self can be experienced as Geist. This “higher self” has to be distin-
guished from the lower self (the soul) or the bodily self. It is not identical to the
Ichzentrum.14 Geist is concerned with willing and valuing, hence not reducible to
the intellect. She illustrates this notion of “spirit” with the sudden illumination of
clarity when trying to resolve a difficult problem, whether this be purely academic
or of a moral nature. After a crisis, the I might also experience itself in this special
light without being focused on a particular object. This is an experience of one’s own
spiritual essence as such (that is, one experiences “seine eigene geistige Wesenheit
gleichsam ‘an sich’”; Walther, Phänomenologie, 121). The center of the self is no
longer “embedded” into an I serving as the spectator of consciousness, but is freed
into an inner realm of light. Experiences no longer call forth the I, but they are illu-
minated through the I. Although these streams of light have their source in the I
8 This is also present in animals. (She admits that one might prefer using a different terminology for
the two realities.)

9 That is, experiences of feeling or affect (Gemüts- und Gefühlserlebnisse) manifest or point to the
basic being (Grundwesen) of the soul.
10 She appeals to telepathic experiences as phenomenological evidence for this, as well as experi-
ences of prayer or meditation in various religious traditions. She cites several Sufi sources (Walther,
Phänomenologie, 112–113).
11 She argues that “je mehr er sich seinem Gegenstand hingibt, desto tiefer versinkt sein Ichzentrum
in den Quellgrund jener Gefühle” (Walther, Phänomenologie, 114; emphasis hers).

12 “Nur das Erlebnis, das Gefühl selbst muß leibhaftig und ursprünglich erlebt werden” (Walther,
Phänomenologie, 115).
13 This lightning flash of insight into the self (Selbstschau), generated by reaching the core or source
(Quelle) of the experience, lasts only for a moment, otherwise it would become narcissism or
insanity. She argues that self-love is only permitted as or through love of others or as the recognition
of being created by a loving God who endows it with value (Walther, Phänomenologie, 116).
14 “Die Welt des Geistigen ist eine Region für sich, der auch das geistige Grundwesen des Menschen
angehört.” Es “ist aber streng zu unterscheiden vom Ichzentrum” (Walther, Phänomenologie, 119;
emphasis hers).
they are felt as coming from elsewhere and connect the spiritual source of the I to
another source beyond it (that is, Geist).15 This is an experience of the self as being
the proprietor and source of this spiritual (albeit not necessarily religious) life and as
participant in a realm or world of “spiritual” things. It is an individual and personal
experience of the self, understood as having its own “coloration” or “light,” its own
manner of seeing spiritually or mentally. This aspect of the human Grundwesen is
the most generally valid (allgemeingültig), and it does not lack individuality or par-
ticularity. The self is the source of these experiences and they take on the particular
coloration of that individual and the particular extent or expanse of that person.
The desires, feelings, and mental attitudes of a person can proceed from either soul
or spirit and are different depending on their source.16 Although the three “sides” of
the self can be clearly distinguished, they ideally operate closely together and flow
into each other. Only when they permeate each other fully is a person “whole.” Each
of the ways of being has its own core and yet the three cores can combine into one
and act as a unity or be wholly in harmony (Walther, Phänomenologie, 126). One
can listen to one’s heart or spirit and, hence, focus specifically on one of the centers.
The goal, however, is always to penetrate their respective cores and to unify them as
much as possible. Everyone has to find his or her own path to such unity or harmony
(Walther, Phänomenologie, 130).17 The concentrated power or insight of the I must
not coincide with these basic ways of being; one can live in experiences that are
peripheral rather than at the core of one’s being. The I can even be scattered over
a variety of experiences, can grow, develop, and live in ways that are not identical
to the “core” of one’s being. In traumatic experiences the I can even be entirely
empty of world or soul or basic being. It experiences itself, and is fully conscious
of this experience, without connection to its essential core. She concludes that the
Ichzentrum serves as the “eye” to the Grundwesen rather than being identical to
it (Walther, Phänomenologie, 141). Walther carefully distinguishes, then, between
I, lived body, soul, and spirit. Although they form a unity and ideally operate in
harmony, they are distinct aspects of the human being. Stein and Conrad-Martius
use similar terminology, but they present a somewhat more complicated picture.
15 “Sie leiten zu einer zentralen geistigen Lichtquelle hin, mit der jene Quelle im Menschen selbst gle-
ichsam verbunden ist. Die Quelle in him scheint irgendwie von ihr abzustammen, mit ihr wesensver-
wandt, ihr freilich durchaus nicht gleich zu sein” (Walther, Phänomenologie, 122).
16 Geistige Liebe [spiritual love] is different from love generated in the soul (Walther, Phänomenolo-
gie, 124).
17 She gives as an example having just survived a moment of highest threat to life and describes
how all three cores are active and yet flow entirely into each other in a higher unity that comprises
all three elements (Walther, Phänomenologie, 127).
Edith Stein
Stein wrote extensively on the question of the human person.18 In almost all cases,
she draws distinctions between the phenomenological “pure ego” (das reine Ich), the
notion of the human being (der Mensch), and the idea of personhood (die Person).
The human being has a lived body (Leib), soul, and spirit, but none of these (or
their unification) is reducible to the I or to the person. Even in her early lectures she
distinguishes personhood from the pure I as the source of experience and the seat
of consciousness. She defines the person as subject of an actual egoic life with a
lived body, soul, and a developing character.19 Human life has a core in a way that
inanimate things do not; it has both an organic and psychic life-force.20 The lived body
of the person has the ability to express its inner life. She distinguishes soul (Seele)
from psyche (Psyche) and both from the flow of consciousness (Bewußtseinsstrom)
or their totality (Gesamtheit der Erlebnisse) (Stein, GA, 8: 124). Although character
may seem to belong to Geist, it is actually connected to affective life and the realm
of the will.21 The lived body is formed by the soul, which she explicitly distinguishes
from religious notions of the soul as a purely psychic concept. The soul is inextricably
tied to the body and unable to survive without it.22 The soul comprises the Gemüt,
18 Stein’s dissertation on empathy raises the topic, and she returns to it as a central concern in her
introduction to philosophy, her early text on the philosophy of psychology, and on the state; she
designed two lecture series, one on philosophical anthropology and one on theological anthropology,
and both her attempts to bring together phenomenology and Catholic Thomistic philosophy, the
unpublished Akt und Potenz and the posthumously published Endliches und ewiges Sein devote
much space to this topic. Although some of Stein’s work has been translated, for consistency’s
sake I rely here on the recent German critical edition Gesamtausgabe [Complete Works] (Freiburg:
Herder, 2000–; 27 volumes expected). As I cannot examine all of her works here, I will make some
brief remarks about her early lectures (1920–21) introducing philosophy, half of which are devoted
to the topic of the human person, and look more fully at her main work Finite and Eternal Being
(completed 1938 before her move to the monastery in Echt). This is therefore a necessarily brief
treatment. For a much fuller account see Peter Schulz, Edith Steins Theorie der Person: Von der
Bewußtseinsphilosophie zur Geistmetaphysik (Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1994). This is a slightly revised
dissertation that considers most of Stein’s works chronologically in terms of what they have to say
about the topic of personhood. For a briefer (but less pedantic) consideration see Antonio Calcagno,
The Philosophy of Edith Stein (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2007), especially Chaps. 2,
3, and 5. Stein’s works are cited by volume number, followed by page number.
19 The person is “Subjekt eines aktuellen Ichlebens, das Leib und Seele hat, mit leiblichen und seelis-
chen Eigenschaften, speziell mit einem Charakter ausgestattet ist, das sich bzw. seine Eigenschaften
unter der Einwirkung äußerer Umstände entwickelt und in dieser Entwicklung eine ursprüngliche
Anlage zur Entfaltung bringt.” Stein, “Einführung in die Philosophy,” ed. by Claudia Mariéle Wulf,
in Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 8 (Freiburg: Herder, 2004), 103.
20 “Es kann also nicht von einem Zusammenfallen von Ich und Kern die Rede sein, sondern nur von
einer Einbettung des Ich in den Kern, einer Aufnahme in ihn” (Stein, GA, 8: 120).
21 “Die eigentliche Domäne des Charakters ist der Bereich des Gemüts- und Willenslebens” (Stein,
GA, 8: 128). “Charakter ist die Aufgeschlossenheit (eventuell auch Verschlossenheit) für das Reich
der Werte und die Art, wie man sich für ihre Verwirklichung einsetzt” (Stein, GA, 8: 128).
22 “Sie kann nur existieren in realer Anknüpfung an einen Leib und hört auf, sobald er seine Leib-
lichkeit verliert und als bloßer materieller Körper zurückbleibt” (Stein, GA, 8: 145). This is some-
thing that will shift in her later work, where she increasingly thinks of the soul as immortal.
understood as the ground of affect, the seat of emotion, and the ability to feel what
comes to it. The soul takes “in” such feelings and is the “place” of the center of
the person, where it makes its own what is given to it from the outside, but also
has its own quasi-independent life in its Grundstimmungen (Stein, GA, 8: 137). She
distinguishes between soul and spirit, although she refuses the popular association
of Geist solely with the mind. Human Geistigkeit includes a kind of openness and
awareness that suggests self-consciousness.23 A person has freedom and hence the
ability to act or not. Intentionality is a key element of the “basic form of specifically
human soul-life.”24
In her magnum opus Finite and Eternal Being, she explores the phenomenological
I—moving from Husserl’s pure ego to something like Heidegger’s facticity—in con-
versation with Thomistic philosophy.25 She begins with a summary of the pure ego,
distinguishing between internal and external consciousness, and moves from there to
the recognition of our finitude. Part II of her book proceeds in a phenomenological
manner from my temporal being. She engages in an extensive phenomenological
analysis, unfolding the being of the I and its experiences (Erlebniseinheiten) as pure
I, distinguished from but always directed toward the content of experience. This being
I find and analyze in my self is finite; I am not its source and cannot maintain it in
being.26 I therefore encounter the notion of another being who is not thus dependent
or finite, which is not mine, but fundamental to it (that is, eternal being).27 Part III
of her book attempts to get to a notion of nature or essence (Wesen) that would be
general, unchanging, and unified, able to give an account of singular instance but not
reducible to it. Philosophy can get us to a first and simple being, but only revelation
(especially notions of the Trinity and of creation) can guide fully to the first being.
23 Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person: Vorlesungen zur philosophischen Anthropologie (Münster
1932/33), ed. by Beate Beckmann-Zöller, in Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 14 (Freiburg: Herder, 2004), 78.
These lectures on philosophical anthropology draw explicitly on phenomenology and, increasingly,
on other sources to provide a pedagogically useful account of the human person. (She was still able
to give these lectures before being barred from teaching after the Nazi takeover. Her subsequent
lectures on theological anthropology remain incomplete and were not delivered, although the labor of
thought she invested in them obviously finds resonance in her later writings.) She again distinguishes
human from animal, arguing that both have a soul, but that the human soul responds in a way that
animal souls do not and that it is self-reflexive.
24 “… die Grundform des spezifisch menschlichen Seelenlebens: Die Intentionalität oder das
Gerichtetsein of Gegenständliches” (Stein, GA, 14: 80). The analysis of capacities and of the
moral dimension is also much stronger in this text than in the early lectures.
25 Although she does not follow Heidegger entirely, she employs his account for a recognition of
our finitude and anxiety toward death. In fact, the book has an appendix that provides a reading and
a critique of Being and Time. She treats phenomenology as a “natural” approach in contrast to the
approach from revelation, which relies more heavily on Thomistic philosophy.
26 She refers repeatedly to Heidegger’s analyses in Being and Time here, including the analysis of
being-toward-death, although she is more critical of it in the appendix, based on her own experience
with severely wounded and dying people in her stint as a field hospital aid during WWI. See
Endliches und ewiges Sein: Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins, ed. Andreas Uwe Müller,
in Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 11/12 (Freiburg: Herder, 2016), 471–481.
27 (Stein, GA, 11/12: 60) She points to the traditional proofs for God’s existence as another way of
getting to the same insights.

After extensive discussion of Thomistic philosophy in Parts IV–VI, she returns to

the being of the I as lived body, soul, and spirit (Leib, Seele, Geist) in Part VII.
In Part VII of her book, Stein distinguishes between “I,” “soul,” “spirit,” and
“person.” Geist and Vernunft go together. Spirit refers to the innermost core of the
person. She claims that it can be offered entirely without being lost. Like Walther,
she compares the spirit to a light that illuminates the person. The I is the bearer of
an individual and particular life, internal even without rationality.28 As in her earlier
treatment, the human being is always “leiblich-seelisch-geistiges Sein” (Stein, GA,
11/12: 310). Consciousness is not identical to life but assumes deeper layers of
personhood. There is much we do not remember or that has escaped us and that
we can no longer recall to conscious awareness. The “pure I” refers to the flow of
experiences of consciousness that are unified in it and that can be distinguished from
the person. Here, body and soul are operative (rather than spirit). All my experiences
show me to be a “me,” a self, rather than just a thing called “human person.” The body
is not simply a “thing” (Körper), but is experienced internally and intimately as Leib.
The feelings of and pressures on this lived body are my own. What turns a Körper
into a Leib is having a soul (that is, affect and emotion).29 The soul is the center of
the living being; it is the source of its being and its identity.30 Because humans are
conscious they have an inner life and are bearers of their life in a special way. We
have freedom, although we do not always use it. We experience ourselves as given
to ourselves and yet can also give ourselves to others. The three “parts” (body, soul,
spirit) are not separate from each other, but are intimately interwoven, yet refer to
different experiences of the self. She supports this with extensive phenomenological
analyses of experiences, concluding that the I can be experienced to some extent as
separate from the lived body, yet only in a certain sense; in other ways it is always
connected to it. Similarly, the geistig life can be distinguished from that of the soul
or the senses, but is still intimately connected to them. While the spirit can exercise a
certain freedom over the lived body, it is still its material substructure and illuminates
the self only through the body.
Stein argues that the soul is the center of or the “inner [part] within” the whole;
it lives in the body, moves it, and has an impact on it, while the spirit can transcend
the soul and view the world through consciousness. The personal I is “at home”
in the soul.31 Everything is gathered, all information from the senses and from the
28 Only when accompanied by understanding and freedom do we have full rationality.

29 Stein is clear that all living entities have a soul, including plants and animals; it is simply the
designation for lived affect, although this is manifested differently in humans, animals, and plants,
or even angels (who do not have bodies), respectively. To have “spiritual life” (again, nothing
especially religious is implied here) means that the being has fully unfolded: “Geistiges Leben ist
Wesensentfaltung als Betätigung eines in seiner Wesensart Vollendeten” (Stein, GA, 11/12: 314).
30 She appeals here to Conrad-Martius, of whose Metaphysische Gespräche she provides an exten-
sive review in Section VI of her unpublished Akt und Potenz, which she sent to Conrad-Martius for
examination. Potenz und Akt: Studien zu einer Philosophie des Seins, ed. by Hans Rainer Sepp, in
Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 10 (Freiburg: Herder, 2005), 153–270.
31 One should note that in her earlier treatments she is much closer to Walther’s analysis, where
Geist is superior to soul (Stein, GA, 11/12: 317).

spirit. The soul cannot live without such receptivity; it lives off what it receives
from spirit and body.32 I, soul, spirit, and person are intimately connected, yet each
has its own meaning. The I refers to the being that is its own life, both in terms
of sensory perception and consciousness. It lives within the body and the soul. Not
all corporeal life is Ich-Leben, but this life has to be experienced. For example,
growth does not belong to it in the same way because it is not sensed. Similarly,
the soul is not identical to conscious life, because it can be affected in various ways
without consciousness. The I, in turn, can open up the soul through memory or
recollection. The soul is the depth of the person (that is, what goes on “within” me
without my always being aware of it). Turning toward our experiencing, becoming
conscious of it, or deliberately reflecting on it reveal various layers of consciousness
accompanying the I. We grow to know ourselves through our experiencing, even if
no active self-reflection is involved. The soul as the bearer of this life only becomes
“visible” (or evident) in such reflection, in self-conscious awareness. The person,
as conscious and free, is able to influence soul and body. The conscious Ichleben is
informed by the depth of the soul. We occasionally get a glimpse of it, but it usually
remains hidden (Stein, GA, 11/12: 319–320). The I is the place of encounter where
the deeper levels of the self break through the surface.33 The person is not reducible to
the “pure I” because it requires the entire fullness of life. Spirit is the most primordial
form of being; it gives meaning to life and leads to “Seinsvollendung” [fulfillment of
being] (Stein, GA, 11/12: 323). Stein is hence able to distinguish within the complex
interplay of acts of consciousness aspects of the self that enable self-identity or
make possible self-transcendence and directness toward others, as well as various
conscious and unconscious dimensions of our experience of the self.
Hedwig Conrad-Martius
The human person is a central theme for Conrad-Martius, a topic she addresses in
most of her writings.34 In an early text composed in the form of a dialogue, she
distinguishes the human soul from the animal soul, human body from all other lived
32 “Es ist das Wesen der Seele mit den darin verwurzelten Eigenschaften und Fähigkeiten, das sich
im Erleben aufschließt und dadurch aufnimmt, was sie braucht, um zu werden, was sie sein soll”
(Stein, GA, 11/12: 318).
33 “Das Ich ist gleichsam die Durchbruchsstelle aus der dunklen Tiefe zur klaren Helligkeit des
bewußten Lebens und damit zugleich von der ‘Möglichkeit’ oder “Vorwirklichkeit’ zur vollen
gegenwärtigen Wirklichkeit” (Stein, GA, 11/12: 320). The soul, unlike the spirit, is always tied to
the material; it is “form” of the body (in a quasi-Aristotelian sense). And yet this material (Stoffliche)
is filled with spirit (geisterfüllt).
34 Her early Metaphysische Gespräche, a phenomenological dialogue, has this as its main topic;
several lectures focus on the question of the human soul or the distinction between human and
animal, and her extensive writings on the question of being also frequently return to the topic. Hedwig
Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1921); Bios und Psyche: Zwei
Vortragsfolgen (Hamburg: Claassen & Goverts, 1949); Die Geistseele des Menschen (Munich:
Kösel-Verlag, 1960); Das Sein (Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1957); Schriften zur Philosophie, 2 vols.
(Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1963); Die Zeit (Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1954).
bodies, and human spirit from incorporeal spirits. This is written as a phenomeno-
logical conversation between two people in search of a definition of the human. The
existence of incorporeal spirits is not assumed but merely used as a phenomenologi-
cal tool of imaginative variation to ascertain the “essence” or “nature” (Wesen) of the
human more fully. The following insights emerge from the dialogue: We experience
directly in and on the body (Leib), although such bodily experience of the I can be
distinguished from soul and body.35 The states of the soul are expressed bodily.36
Yet, the soul is not identical to the I; rather, it is its deepest expression.37 Souls
have weight, while spirit is expressed in terms of lightness or self-transcendence.38
While the spirit understands or grasps, the soul experiences or participates more
intimately.39 She draws on the etymology of Geist to interpret it as the “breath” of
the person (namely, the free essence that animates the Leib and is the fullness of the
person).40 While Leib constitutes the self, Geist allows for self-transcendence and
self-givenness.41 This self-emptying elevation of the spirit makes us a person.42
This is worked out further in various lectures in which she considers the biological
substructure of the human and life as such as well as its psychic dimensions. A special
concern in several of her works is the relation between soul and body.43 She points to
the fact that the unmediated lived experiences (unmittelbaren Erlebnisphänomene)
35 Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 28–34.

36 She calls this a Niederschlagen of the Seelenzustände in the body (Leib) (Conrad-Martius, Meta-
physische Gespräche, 36).

37 Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 40.
38 Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 44–54. She disagrees with the scholastic/Aristotelian
account that the soul forms the body, but she argues that it is formed with and alongside it (das Mitbes-
timmte, Mitgeformte, Mitformierte) (Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 56). Although
the human lives “from” the soul, it is not “das die seinsmäßige Totalität schlechthin Gestaltende”
(Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 57).
39 “Mit dem Geist nimmt oder faßt er nur auf, mit der Seele aber ‘erlebt’ er es. … Die Seele scheint
also immer dort beteiligt, wo der Mensch mit seinem zentralen Selbst in das Erlebte miteinbezogen
oder von ihm betroffen wird. Und weit bedeutungsvoller noch ist die umgekehrte Einsicht: weil
und insofern der Mensch in sein eigenes Zentrum hineingesetzt ist, durch das er—in immanent
beschlossener Selbstheit—Welt und Leben in sich und durch sich empfangen kann, hat er eine
‘Seele’” (Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 72). Later, the soul is described as a living
mirror of one’s experience of the world (Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 78). A human
being “without soul” is missing a central self (Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 80).
40 “So mag jetzt heraustreten, daß der spirituelle Leib oder wenn Sie lieber so wollen, die spirtuelle
Leibhaftigkeit die in freier und immer aktueller Wallung und Wesung besessene und geinnerte Fülle
des eigenen Seins darstellt” (Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 144).
41 “Das Leiben ist das Selbsten, das Geisten das Entselbsten. Im Leiben zieht die Wesenheit sich
selber an, umkleidet sich mit sich, umgrenzt, beschließt sich, versiegelt sich in sich—konstituiert
ihr von allem anderen abgeschiedenes, ihr monadisches, ihr selbstiges Wesen. Im Geisten aber
bietet sie nun wieder dieses ihr geleibtes Wesen dar, verströmt sich, ist ganz und gar hinaus- und
fortgegeben, außer sich, frei von sich und von bewahrter und umgrenzter Beschwerung des eigenen
Selbst” (Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 215–216).
42 Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 220.
43 The second lecture series is entitled “Grundstrukturen des Leib-Seele-Verhältnisses” (Conrad-
Martius, Bios und Psyche, 75–137). In several places she considers the question of the human spirit
or soul (Geistseele) and its relation to the body one of the most difficult philosophical problems,
of psychosomatic illness have made the Cartesian dualism that thinks of the soul as
inner subject and the body as mere external object untenable. Instead, body and soul
are intimately tied to each other on a variety of levels.44 The “entelechial” soul has
four aspects: corporeal, psychosomatic, affective, and spirited.45 Together with the
“ground” of the soul itself, this provides five primordial realms of experiencing.46
Thus, the ensouled human self is actualized in four directions: outward to the lived
body (Exkarnation) and inward to the psyche (Inkarnation), with the psyche allowing
for three possible movements: toward body, soul, or spirit.47 Like Stein, she associates
Gemüt with affect, grounding corporeal movements that express or manifest the soul.
The movements of the Gemüt lie at the bottom of corporeal movements, work in
parallel with them, or can also be opposed to them.48 The Gemüt seems to function
insisting that the two belong together intimately and yet can be distinguished in terms of function
and phenomenological experience (see Conrad-Martius, Geistseele, 9–10). In her Metaphysische
Gespräche one of the speakers notes that it is absurd to separate body and soul artificially and then
attempt to bring them back together. They are always experienced as an ontic unity (Conrad-Martius,
Metaphysische Gespräche, 22).
44 “… in vielfach wesensverschiedener Art und Weise miteinander verflochten sind und wechsel-
seitig aufeinander wirken” (Conrad-Martius, Bios und Psyche, 80). She again ascends from plant
to animal to human. Animal and human share in common the intimate link between soul and body.
“Tier und Mensch greifen von der selbsthaften Innerlichkeit oder dem inneren Selbst her in den
Leib hinein, bzw. zu den Gliedern hindurch” (Conrad-Martius, Bios und Psyche, 88). In the earlier
dialogue she describes this as the human ability to emerge from the sphere of nature, while the
animal is submerged in it (Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 91). Yet, an animal owns its
life and is able to be the “bearer of actions” (Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 95).
45 “… vierfache Ausgestaltung der entelechialen Seele: eine leibliche, eine leib-seelische, eine
affektive und eine geistige,” plus “den entelechialen Seelengrund selber” (Conrad-Martius, Bios und
Psyche, 93). “Uns kann aber kein Beispiel so deutlich wie dieses zeigen, daß die vier Lebensbereiche
der menschlichen Totalität, das leibliche, das leib-seelische, das affektive und das geistige, ein
und diesselbe Einlenkungsstelle in der Gesamtstruktur des Menschen besitzen, nämlich das beim
Menschen personal geprägte entelechiale Seelenselbst, das als virtueller Wurzelgrund in allen vier
Bereichen zu selbsteigener Verwirklichung und Manifestation gelangt und deshalb auch über alle
vier Bereiche, die Psyche mit ihren drei Bezirken und den Leib, wirkursächlich zu herrschen vermag”
(Conrad-Martius, Bios und Psyche, 105).
46 “Wir haben folgendes Ergebnis gewonnen: es gibt zunächst eine zweifache große Gabelung der
grundlegenden entelechialen Seele: einerseits zur leiblichen Verwirklichung oder zu dem, was ich
soeben Exkarnation nannte, und andererseits zur selbsthaften inneren Verwirklichung, die man im
Unterschied zur leiblichen die psychische im allgemeinen Sinne nennen kann. Diese Psyche aber
gabelt sich wiederum in drei Unterbereiche: den leib-seelischen, den affektiv seelischen und den
geistig seelischen. Der leib-seelische ist von innen her zum Leibe hinausorientiert, der affektive
in sich selbst hinein orientiert und der geistige … über sich selbst hinaus zu sich selbst zurück”
(Conrad-Martius, Bios und Psyche, 93).
47 “Wir haben gesehen, daß sich das personalgeprägte menschliche Seelenselbst, die grundlegende
entelechiale Seele nach vierfacher Richtung ausgestaltet und aktualisiert zeigt: zunächst mit der
großen Gabelung: exkarnativ zum Leib hinaus und inkarnativ zur Psyche hinein; sodann in bezug
auf die Psyche selbst: erstens von innen her zum Leibe hinaus oder leib-seelisch, zweitens in
ureigener Entfaltung in das Selbst hinein oder affektiv seelisch und drittens in objektiv-subjektiver
Selbstbegegnung oder geist-seelisch” (Conrad-Martius, Bios und Psyche, 134).
48 Conrad-Martius, Bios und Psyche, 115. “Aber der Leib ist ja ohnehin das eigenste Inkarnations-
und Manifestationsfeld der Seele” (Conrad-Martius, Bios und Psyche, 116).

as the place where Leib and Seele meet, where feeling or affect is translated into bodily
response or expression. She vividly describes the various bodily manifestations of
corresponding Gemütsbewegungen.49 We can distinguish whether something begins
in feeling and is expressed in the body or whether it proceeds from the body and
impacts the affective soul. Only in the human does the soul lead to personhood.50
In her later work Conrad-Martius develops the distinction between animal and
human into a distinction between Sichheit [selfhood] and Ichheit [I-hood]. The ani-
mal has a self, but is not self-reflective.51 While the animal has a kind of subjectivity in
which its body is its own and the body is self-directed through its self, only the human
has the kind of self-reflexivity that allows for “Retroszendenz” (that is, an “absolute
inner reverse-transcendency”).52 The personal I has a depth that other beings do not.
Only such entering or deepening into the self allows for a psyche.53 She also stresses
that humans have a soul and body, rather than being a soul or body.54 The “spirit-
ed” (geistige) nature of the human “grounds specifically and directly in its ichhaften
Seinsposition.”55 Spirit is associated explicitly with inner self-reflection and self-
transcendence.56 A self that is an I cannot be conceived without a self-transcending
self-foundation.57 In her Geistseele she develops the notion of an Ursprungsselbst,
49 She explicitly speaks of this as a “translation” from one language into another (Conrad-Martius,
Bios und Psyche, 115). She does, however, in places assimilate Gemüt and Seele, even employing
the expression Gefühlsseele (Conrad-Martius, Bios und Psyche, 116).
50 “Die beim Menschen personhaft geprägte und geistig gestaltete entelechiale Seele ist es selber, die
außerdem zum Leibe, zum affektiv Seelischen und zum Leib-seelischen ausgestaltet ist” (Conrad-
Martius, Bios und Psyche, 123).
51 “Das Tier hat wohl sein leiblich-seelisches Sein im Besitz, aber es hat diesen Besitz nicht wiederum
in Besitz. … Man kann auch sagen: die Ichheit springt da heraus, wo die Sichheit auch noch
zurücküberantwortet ist” (Conrad-Martius, Das Sein, 120). “Die animalische Konstitution ist nur
eine sichhafte, die geistige eine ichhafte” (Conrad-Martius, Geistseele, 59).
52 Conrad-Martius, Geistseele, 10.
53 Conrad-Martius, Geistseele, 19. She does think certain “higher” animals share such “inner space”;
animals have “soul” in the sense of affect and emotion.

54 “Der Mensch ist nicht Geist, er hat einen Geist. Das ist aber etwas völlig anderes” (Conrad-
Martius, Geistseele, 11). Cf.: “… ich selbst habe einen Leib und eine Seele” (Conrad-Martius,
Das Sein, 121). This mode of “possession” is important to her for several reasons. In this context,
she also strongly argues against Heidegger’s notion that Dasein’s existence is its essence. Only in
God are essence and existence identical. See also her review of Sein und Zeit in Conrad-Martius,
Schriften zur Philosophie, Vol. I, 185–193.
55 Conrad-Martius, Das Sein, 119.
56 “Alle geistigen Akte, Erlebnisse und Zuständlichkeiten sind dadurch charakterisiert, daß sie primär
in der inneren Retroszendenz wurzeln, mögen sonst was immer für Faktoren materialgebend und
qualifizierend in sie eingehen. Dadurch grenzt sich das geistige Ich von dem leiblichen und seeli-
schen aufs deutlichste ab” (Conrad-Martius, Das Sein, 122). “Mit der Ichverfassung ist eine Stelle
absoluter innerer Rücktranszendenz gegeben” (Conrad-Martius, Das Sein, 123).
57 “Wir finden überhaupt kein anderes aktualisiertes Sein und Sosein an der pneumatischen Substanz
als die eigentümliche Ausgestaltung dieses ontischen Grundvermögens selber. Im ‘Selber-Können’

des eigenen Seins liegt das ganze Wesen dieser Seinsart beschlossen” (Conrad-Martius, Das Sein,
128); “Ein ichhaft Seiendes existiert überhaupt nicht ohne eine sich selbst übersteigende transzen-
dentale Selbstbegründung” (Conrad-Martius, Das Sein, 137).
a primordial self, which refers to the particular kind of logos of the human in its
“psycho-somatic realms of unfolding.”58 How can this general human self take on the
particular characteristics of a specific person?59 Here, she maintains the distinction
between Exkarnation and Inkarnation further (and she carries it further than Stein):
excarnation is a selfless formation of the primordial self toward the outside, while
incarnation is a self -adhesive formation that moves the primordial self inward.60
This enables the self to enter into itself, to deepen into itself; it creates an internal
space for the self that exists only in humans and certain higher animals. While the
spirit rises out of the self in self-transcendence, the soul sinks into it to attach the self
to itself.61 A full physisch-leibliche Ausgestaltung is necessary for complete human
substantiality to manifest itself.
Conclusion
Several things are striking about these accounts. First, they do phenomenology in
conscious interaction with the larger philosophical tradition and in explicit conversa-
tion with science. Scientific insights, understood as rooted in nature, are not simply
set aside (through reduction, as in Husserl, or by ignoring them, as in many of the
French thinkers), but are taken seriously, albeit not as determining everything that
can be said about the essence of human beings. All three engage in an extended
58 The German for this is leiblichseelische Ausgestaltungsbereiche (Conrad-Martius, Geistseele,
29).
59 She lists several of the traditional views about the transmission of the soul (a soul pre-existing
the body, genetic determination of the general human self, a specifically created soul as forming
a particular body), but judges them unsatisfying. Materialistic options that would get rid of the
soul entirely and reduce the human only to biology are similarly unsatisfying (ontologisch völlig
unbefriedigend), because “the soul is neither a mere phenomenon nor a mere conglomerate of
phenomena that can be characterized as ‘soulful’” (Conrad-Martius, Geistseele, 35). Most of the
other options are rejected because they treat body and soul as separate entities that have to be brought
together artificially and think of the human as a composite of the two. She does want to maintain
the soul as immortal, even if it has a beginning, and as having a qualitative particularity that it does
not lose upon death (Conrad-Martius, Geistseele, 45).
60 “Die Exkarnation ist die leibhaft selbstlose Hinausgestaltung des Ursprungsselbst in der Form
einer arttypischen Stoffsubstanz; die Inkarnation ist die leibhaft selbsthafte Hineingestaltung des
Ursprungsselbstes in sich selbst” (Conrad-Martius, Geistseele, 51).
61 She distinguishes three kinds of Geistigkeit: “1. Geistigkeit als wesensentelechialer Logos, der
mit dem Wesensstoff zusammen als Ursprungsselbst substanziell konkretisiert und individuiert ist;
2. Geistigkeit als das Urgeistige, durch das innersubstanziell werkzeuglich das Ursprungsselbst in
seiner eigenen inneren oder, wie wir auch sagen können, materialen Selbsthaftigkeit zur Verwirk-
lichung gebracht wird; 3. Geistigkeit als aktualisierter (teilsubstanzieller) Geist des Menschen”
(Conrad-Martius, Geistseele, 53).
comparison of the human and the animal, distinguishing them from each other, but
without denigrating or ignoring animality.62
Second, they all set accounts of the person in relation to human community. This is
especially evident in Stein, who started out with a dissertation on empathy, followed it
up with an account of community, and then wrote her own political philosophy. While
I have not had the space here to consider their accounts of community (which are not
simply accounts of empathy), just the fact that these philosophers are able to give
substantive phenomenological analyses of plural selves (unlike the French) is telling.
Stein’s account of community, for example, makes full use of her body–soul–spirit
distinction.
Three, although they use the language of “soul” and explore religious and paranor-
mal experiences (the latter especially in Walther), these are genuinely phenomeno-
logical engagements. Their insights are derived from phenomenological reflection,
imaginative variation, and extensive and detailed descriptions of concrete phenom-
ena. Conrad-Martius especially employs these tools, including speaking of goblins,
fairies, spirits, demons, angels, and the divine, not claiming any existence for them,
but analyzing how their “being” appears imaginatively and how it is structurally
different from that of humans or animals. Even her extensive analysis of plants and
animals relies not primarily on scientific insight, but on eidetic variation.
Finally, by distinguishing between lived body and soul, rather than collapsing
both into the flesh (which allows for a distinction only between Leib and Körper),
they are able to escape some of the dualism that still haunts the French conversation.
Falque argues that the body–flesh distinction in French phenomenology has led to
“hypertrophy of the flesh,” in which the Cartesian dualism of soul and body is now
re-inscribed upon the distinction between body (Körper) and flesh (Leib).63 Simi-
larly, Marion expends intense effort in his Descartes’ Passive Thought to distinguish
the bodies of the world from my own body or flesh (meum corpus).64 This distinc-
tion requires no such strenuous exercise with the German terminology, because it
operates with a tripartite distinction of the lived aspects of the human being already
distinguished from bodies (Körper) in the world. While for Henry, Marion, and to
some extent Falque the flesh is the seat of affect and emotion, Walther, Stein, and
Conrad-Martius attribute these to the Gemüt and/or the soul.65 Leib is hence able to
62 Besides the extensive discussions of animality in all three thinkers, Conrad-Martius also writes
extensively on plants. In her Metaphysische Gespräche she includes a chapter on evolution, under-
stood from a phenomenological perspective (Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche, 167–241).
63 He makes this argument in several places, as it is central to the “in-between” notion of the “corps
épandu” (between corps étendu/Cartesian extended body and corps vécu/Husserlian lived body)
he is trying to develop in his own work. See, for example, Emmanuel Falque, The Wedding Feast
of the Lamb: Eros, the Body, and the Eucharist, trans. by George Hughes (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2016), 12–15.
64 Jean-Luc Marion, On Descartes’ Passive Thought: The Myth of Cartesian Dualism (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2018).

65 It is important to note that soul has no religious connotations, as these are attributed (together
with many other elements) to Geist.

serve as a concept of the lived body (that is neither flesh nor soul) in a way that has
become impossible for the French thinkers.
Obviously, the traditional terminology they employ is loaded and liable to be
misunderstood. Yet, it may not always be necessary to reject old terms if they can
be made subject to careful phenomenological analysis and articulation and, hence,
retrieved more productively. We have here a cohesive and convincing account of the
human person that is not a Cartesian subjectivity, not a controlling subject, but a
healthy personhood in relation to others, characterized by both freedom and finitude.
While more space would be needed to show all the ways in which they could address
the questions of the subject raised in the past century, their account is at the very
least a highly complex notion of the self that is as good a candidate for further
conversation as Marion’s adonné or Falque’s “spread body.”66 Although Walther,
Stein, and Conrad-Martius are certainly trying to reach for an understanding of “the
human” or the (singular) person, this is never an isolated individual, but always
a “being-with-others” (and in a more robust sense than in Heidegger). Hence, their
accounts of self-identity and self-transcendence may also allow for a more genuinely
phenomenological account of selfhood.67 Obviously, far deeper engagement with
their work is needed to explore fully all the riches they have to offer.
Christina M. Gschwandtner teaches Continental Philosophy of Religion at Fordham University.

She is the author of several books and papers on the work of Jean-Luc Marion and contemporary
religious phenomenology.
66 Conrad-Martius, for example, gives an account of the givenness of the self that appears consid-
erably more phenomenological than Marion’s adonné.

67 That is, a more qualified thinking of “oneself as another” than occurs in the French treatments
(such as those by Ricoeur or Kristeva in response to Lévinas’ account of alterity).

What Is the Condition for the Members
of Social Communities to Be “Real”
People According to Gerda Walther?
Manuela Massa
Abstract This chapter explores the notion of social community in the philosophy of
Gerda Walther. I explore the essence of community to obtain the inner constitution of
the community’s members, as they become a “social community.” This requires an
understanding of the noematic and noetic sides of the lived experience of community
to obtain the object of communal consciousness, and this understanding is identified
by Walther as “we-intentionality.” The community, as we will find, comes to be
based on the mental state of its members and the profound similarity and union
between every member through shared experience. I analyze Walther’s understanding
of community by considering the reason for its existence, in its passivity and activity.
Ultimately, I demonstrate that, although community may be experienced internally,
it may also present externally. In the case of the latter, empathy makes possible
one’s grasping of the lived experience of community in the other, which is to be
distinguished from the unified we of the interior experience of community as a
oneness.
Keywords Community · Society · Egos · Noema · Intentionality · Passivity

Activity
Analyzing the Human Being: The Ontology of Social

Community
To understand the philosophical significance of Walther’s dissertation “Ein Beitrag

zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” written in 1919 and published in 1922,
we must first ask the following question: What is the meaning or sense of community?
In posing this question, two further questions arise: (1) Is a community determined
M. Massa (B)
Society and Culture in Motion,
Reichardtstraße 6, 06114 Halle (Saale), Germany
e-mail: manuela.massa@phil.uni-halle.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_8
102 M. Massa
or defined solely by the sum or total numbers of its members? and (2) Is it possible
for a plurality of living beings to create something like a community?
Many philosophers have taken up these two questions and most of them have
offered a political response. According to Aristotle, for example, the human being
is defined as ζùoν πoλιτικóν [a political living being]. His view claims for human
beings a political communitarian essence in the world, which unfolds most fully
in the polis. The individual’s political essence is concretized in his or her being-
with-another or in the capacity to live with one another, understood as the telos of
his κoινωνία [partnership or community]. The polis comes to determine the con-
crete life of its members. One contemporary philosopher, Matthias Kaufmann, in his
Aufgeklärte Anarchie: Eine Einführung in die politische Philosophie, which stud-
ies the political meaning of community, emphasizes the role that the polis plays
for Aristotle. He underlines how the polis comes into being “by nature” through
human agency, giving the individual the ability to constitute the state. Moreover,
at its base, the constitution of any state requires κoινωνία or the togetherness of
its members.1 Phenomenological analysis stresses this aspect, as the focus on the
sociality of community becomes broader when considering consciousness and the
intentionality of community members. For example, in his Einleitung in die Ethik,
Edmund Husserl justifies the criticism of legal norms by “construct[ing] an idea of a
social community as a pure idea of reason,”2 in which aspects of the community are
grounded on the self-consciousness of an autonomous subject, within the frameworks
of subjectivity and inter-subjectivity. Also founded on this ideal limit is his idea of
the state in which the constitution of society is grounded in a contract. For Martin
Heidegger community also implies the idea of sociality. He refers to the πòλις as
the “possibility of human life,” the expression of being-with-one-another. Heidegger
notes that Aristotle sees the “ground of the being of human being” in the being of
πòλις, so Aristotle’s identification of the human being as λoγóν εχoν must include
the historical openness of the worldly constructed Dasein.3 The reason for this is
clarified in Being and Time. Here, the sociality of existence is interpreted through
the fundamental meaning of “being-with.” This reading results mostly from the fact
that the everydayness in which existence is is not intended to express a negative soci-
ological characteristic of a mass existence; rather, the sociality of existence affects
every person in a normal “state of consciousness.” Heidegger elaborates the essen-
1 Matthias Kaufmann, Aufgeklärte Anarchie: Eine Einführung in die politische philosophie in Edi-
tion Philosophie No.? (Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1999), 72.
2 “… die Idee einer sozialen Gemeinschaft als reine Vernuftidee zu konstruiren” (my translation).
See Edmund Husserl, Einleitung in Die Ethik: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920 and 1924, ed.
by Henning Peucker, in Husserliana Materialien Series No. 37 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004), 57.
For the concept of the state and his understanding of community see Karl Schuhmann, Husserls
Staatsphilosophie, in Alber-Reihe Praktische Philosophie No. 29 (Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1988). For
the meaning of law for Husserl see Sophie Loidolt, Anspruch und Rechtfertigung: Eine Theorie des
rechtlichen Denkens im Anschluss an die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls, in Phaenomenologica
No. 191 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009).
3 Martin Heidegger, Grundbegriffe der Aristotelischen Philosophie, ed. by Mark Michalski, in
Gesamtausgabe No. 18 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002), 45.

What Is the Condition for the Members of Social Communities … 103
tial principles constitutive of being-with’s essence, which includes the nature of the
average “rule state” of every individual. The social-philosophically decisive result
of Heidegger’s analysis, then, is his demonstration of the way in which Dasein not
only opens a world in the everydayness of existence, whereby the handiness and the
presence of nature are always already given, but also that this world of existence is
always already “being-with,” which also includes everything in the form of in-Sein.
Gerda Walther’s analysis of community bears some similarity to Heidegger’s
notion of being-with. Given that social community requires real, actual human beings
as its base, for community members share their experience with one another, she
maintains that the essence of social community and its correlated phenomena maybe
understood through empathy. In her dissertation she focuses on the experience of
sharing, which becomes the foundation of her development of social community.
This is the case because, without sharing, living beings cannot be socially involved
with one another. Walther’s analysis operates on two levels: the ontological and the
phenomenological. The social community requires an ontological foundation, since
ontologies involve “the essence in general,” the eidos. But, it is only by following the
principles of phenomenology that consciousness acquires the essence of an object
through the adequation of meaning intention and meaning fulfillment. Thus, the task
of phenomenology is to study the continuous flow of experience through a study
of intentionality and by reflecting on the objects that populate our shared public
and objective world. Walther shows how private experience can be understood as
a methodological starting point for us to share the objects that populate the world;
hence, the way of understanding social community becomes grounded in its external
or internal constitution. Whereas the external focuses on a conscious subject fac-
ing the entire, objective social community, the interior explores how the conscious
subject is connected to the community’s other members. In this internal perspec-
tive, there has to be the same kind of intention, understood as something belonging
to all members, since the community’s foundation is given through shared experi-
ences and the interactions of its members. So, by sharing experience the structure of
social constitution emerges, which is based on the individual empathy of community
members.
The Base of Social Community: Its “Emotional–Spiritual”

Life and Its Relation to Intentional Content
When Walther speaks about the relationships between human beings and other
essences, such as God, angels, and fairies, her aim is to show how this associa-
tion, from an externally perceived perspective, is incapable of presenting the social
community’s essential meaning or sense. The connection between the community’s
members is expressed by the German word Gemeinschaft [community], which pre-
supposes “one common factor” as its base. Hence, we must ask: What kind of com-
mon aspect is shared between different members in a human community? Walther
104 M. Massa
argues that the common aspect cannot be anything related to members’ bodily con-
stitution, as she focuses on their emotional–spiritual life. The members of a social
community are conscious of their intentional content and can communicate with
one another. To understand what is shared by members of the community, Walther
focuses on the noetic aspect of community.
Antonio Calcagno’s analysis is very helpful for understanding better Walther’s
proposal. He points out that Walther “claimed that what makes us conscious of expe-
riencing community is what she called a lived experience of ‘Einigung,’ or oneness.
What is proper to my mental experience of a community is the living experience of a
profound similarity and unity of mind with an other.”4 According to his interpretation,
we can distinguish roughly two phases of Walther’s thinking about community. One
phase concerns the community’s real experience, characterized by the intended expe-
riences of its subjects. The other is placed on the side of the we-experience (namely,
the constitutive factor of the community). In seizing the peculiar real experience as
experience, Walther uses the example of a group of children who pretend that they
are the servants of a fairy and build a “community to serve this fairy.”5 The chil-
dren are conscious that the intentional object of their community is not real, since the
fairy does not exist, but reality arises from their intentional experiences, in which they
understand the fairy and their consequent behavior towards it. Hence, the requirement
for community need not be found in a real object or in real relationships; rather, the
way to grasp community rises from the content of the same intention relocated on the
noematic side of this reflexion, as a community’s intentional object is required to be
the same for the members of the community. Angela Ales Bello clarifies that, starting
from a communal object, it is possible to obtain the intentional life of the subject by
considering him or her as a being who possesses the very intentional content of his
or her experience, which is similar to that of other members.6 Drawing on this char-
acterization of community as subjects’ shared experience, we arrive at our second
point, which concerns we-experience, which is grounded on the distinction Walther
introduces between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (that is, between community and
society). This distinction may be understood by considering the example of a group
of workers from different countries, such as Italy, Slovakia, and Poland; they are
employed together on a construction site.7 The workers’ different linguistic idioms
prevent mutual understanding. Furthermore, if they are employed together and doing
the same kind of work, this implies a shared temporality and continuous work as a
4 Antonio Calcagno, “Gerda Walther: On the Possibility of a Passive Sense of Community and the
Inner Time Consciousness of a Community”, in a special volume dedicated to early phenomenology,
ed. by Jeff Mitscherling and Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray, Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental
Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 16(2), Fall 2012, 89–105, 91.
5 “Gemeinschaft der Diener dieser Fee.” Gerda Walther, “Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen
Gemeinschaften,” in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. 6, ed. by

Edmund Husserl, Moritz Geiger, Alexander Pfänder, and Max Scheler (Halle: Max Niemeyer,
1923), 25.
6 Angela Ales Bello and Marina Pia Pellegrino, Incontri possibili: empatia, telepatia, comunità,
mistica (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2014), 45.

7 Gerda Walther, “Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” 30.
team. They share similar aims and needs, and in this sense they are a society. Because
of their communal work they probably also live and cook together. Walther asks if
this kind of togetherness is enough to build a social “community.” Here, Walther
claims that a social community can only be built between these workers if they have
an inner connection [innere Verbundenheit] based on the feeling of their togetherness
[Gefuehl der Zusammengehoerigkeit], which permits them to share their Erlebnisse
[experiences], actions, goals, desires, and aspirations. The inner Einigung (namely,
oneness), therefore, becomes the condition for distinguishing the community from
society, since oneness represents a community’s essence insofar as the oneness rep-
resents the “inner-soul self-connection with one intentional object.”8 The grasping
of the oneness of community is to be understood as actual experience, as an act
performed by the I, temporally located in the moment in which this very I lives.
The seizing of the oneness occurs in the Gefühl-strom [the flow of feelings], which
appears from the background and in which the I finds tranquility for the duration of
the oneness. Hence, the awareness is fundamentally a Keimzelle [core or nucleus] in
which the habitual lived experience of the community can localize itself.9 Here, in
habitual forms of community the conscious I does not play a primary role.10
This is the reason, as Felipe Léon and Dan Zahavi remark, that Walther’s social
community requires that it be given as shared experience, something that should not
be grasped as purely mine or yours, for we are experiencing it together. “The We is
not an experiencing subject in its own right. Rather the We-experiences occur and
are realised in and through the participating individuals.”11 While Walther qualifies
the consciousness of the community as intentional, we have two recognizable forms
of experience, the “remembered” [erinnerte] and the “habitual,” both of which are
useful for understanding community life. These forms are marked by two different
temporalities.12 In the case of memory, the actual experience of remembering belongs
to the intentional object in the self, located in the psyche/soul behind the I-point:
here, the possibility arises that what is born in the mind with one memory may be
reproduced as object, as noema. But, this kind of experience, as Walther clarifies, is
für immer abgelaufen [always fleeting]. What is born in the mind, then, is given only
as an afterimage [Nachbild] of past experiences.13 In habitual awareness the content
of experience is actually relived, whereas in unconscious experience it can only come
to awareness in a present-now, but its background and constituting moments of past
content remain hidden to an actual I.14 Hence, the experience of community may
8 “Jenes eigenartige innerseseelische Sich-Verbinden mit einem intentionalen Objekt,” in Gerda

Walther, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemenischaften,” 34.
9 Calcagno, “Gerda Walther,” 97.
10 Gerda Walther, “Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemenischaften,” 38.
11 Felipe León and Dan Zahavi, “Phenomenology of Experiential Sharing: The Contribution of
Schutz and Walther,” in Alessandro Salice and Hans Bernhard Schmid (eds.), The Phenomenological
Approach to Social Reality: History, Concepts, Problems, in Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality
No. 6. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), 228.
12 Angela Ales Bello and Marina Pia Pellegrino, Incontri possibili, 20.
13 Gerda Walther, “Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemenischaften,” 42–43.
106 M. Massa
be actually lived not only as a present moment, but also as an actual, habituated
experience of oneness.
The Copernican Turn of Sociology15
What exactly does Walther mean by we-experience? Is she claiming that the social
community is grounded only on the empathy of its members? According to Walther,
empathy cannot be the only grounding factor of community because, as she points
out, it is something different than the community’s collective experience.16 For
example, let us consider the diverse experiences that a group of people have when
viewing a beautiful film.17 What happens when they see it? Each individual in the
group—whom we will call A, B, C, and D—admire it. Here, the einfühlend [the
object of empathy] of each member must be compared with the experience E (that is,
the film), which is something different for everybody, since E remains for A, B, C,
and D something experienced separately. Hence, to admire and enjoy E is something
seemingly unique to each member, because each individual has his or her own expe-
rience (A, B, C, and D) of the film. However, at some point, what Walther defines as
a Zwischenraum [an in-between space] manifests itself, and the common, collective
view of A, B, C, and D emerges. For Walther such a factor determines the social
community (namely, a we-experience emerges that belongs to A, B, C, and D and
becomes part of their experience).18 A, B, C, and D share a unified experience of
living through the same film together.
Communal experience is distinguished from empathy. To grasp the lived experi-
ence of another person in empathy modifies the originary lived experience of the other
and of oneself. For example, one may be able to grasp through words or any other
phenomenon of expression the lived experience of another even though I myself may
have never undergone such experiences. A gap exists between the I and the other, and
union in empathy is impossible because the I and its objectivation of the content of
the other’s mind remain distinct. In communal experience the I and others experience
the same thing and do so as a union or as a we: the gap between self and others of
empathy means that the experience of both individuals remains distinct from one
another, although one may understand another in a lived experience of empathy.
Walther claims that community presupposes a Wechseleinigung [mutual oneness] in
which there is a mutual exchange of the same, unified experience among the members
of the group, who live the experience as one. Members of a community are capable
of sharing the same, intense spiritual experiences. In a society whose members may
16 “Dem Mitfühlen usw. gegenüber ist das Gemeinschaftserleben also etwa prinzipiell Ver-
schiedenes.” Gerda Walther, “Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemenischaften,” 75.
17 Gerda Walther gives a similar example of a beautiful panorama (Gerda Walther, “Ein Beitrag zur
Ontologie der sozialen Gemenischaften,” 75).

share a common purpose or end individuals mutually influence or affect one another:
they may share a Wechselwirkung or mutual effect on one another. In a community,
however, one may experience not only a Wechselwirkung but also a Wechseleinigung
or the unity of one with others.
A community, then, must be understood as having its base in the life of its mem-
bers, who share a feeling of unity or oneness that is simultaneously motivated by a
shared object of experience. There are cases, however, in which a unity exists, but
there is no shared object. What is primary is the union between members: the union
itself may be said to be the object of the relation. These unions take the shape of inti-
mate forms of sociality, including lovers, friends, and families.19 Walther views these
non-objectivated communities as reflexive. Walther also claims that there are iterated
communities. Here, members of a large community are united by the structure of the
community (for example, political parties).
The we form of sociality, for Walther, must not be viewed as something that lies
behind or as surrounding an individual because community itself is grounded in the
individual I-center of every individual: community is entirely grounded in members
who are fully aware of its existence. Moreover, although members of a community
may occupy different places insofar as some members may find themselves in subor-
dinate or higher positions, they share, as Antonio Calcagno points out, an awareness
of their unity, mutual reciprocity of exchange of experience, shared knowledge, and
mutual affectivity.20 But community also contains, as Husserl and Pfänder point out,
a passive or “secondary”21 level of constitution. If intentionality and affectivity are
the active elements of a communal life the passive life of the community is deeply
shaped by the unconscious, the subconscious, and habits. Walther, for example, dis-
tinguishes between the actual and habitual unions of a community. The actual union
of a community’s life is based on the spiritual union of the subject with the intentional
object.22 Community, here, is based on actual lived experience that arises from the
background of consciousness and enters into waking consciousness through the I and
its intending the object, which is union, along with a warm and intense “feeling of
togetherness.” Although the experience of community is constituted in the I-centers
of individual members and is not an unconscious experience, Walther still admits
that the experience does flow from a subconscious background in which there is no
I or intentionality.23
In the habitual experience of community there exists a temporal gap between
one’s actions in the moment and the repeated memories that give rise to such actions.
In other words, one may perform certain acts or live repeatedly certain experiences
like community, but the originary source of such acts or experiences is not present.
19 For more on these non-intentional forms of community see Antonio Calcagno’s chapter in this
book.
20 Calcagno, “Gerda Walther: On the Possibility of a Passive Sense of Community and the Inner
Time Consciousness of a Community”, 96.

108 M. Massa
When one is no longer conscious of the object of intentional experience or when

one object replaces another in the flow of experience a distance between the I and
its subject arises. In the case of community the union, understood as the intentional
object, may no longer be conscious. It may, however, re-emerge through memory
or by association with another act, person, or event.24 Although the memory of
community may not be actual (that is, it is “closed and dead”) because it no longer
has the living force of actual experience and because it is no longer present to the I
as in actual experience, habitual community has its deep roots in consciousness. The
source of the habitual experience of community lies in the recesses of memory, and
when activated by consciousness it acquires some force that fortifies the communal
experience, allowing it to persist. Although the I may not have an intentional object
before it, as in actual experience, in habitual experience the passive source of the
memory of the lived experience continues to structure the very fabric of our living
and acting in community.25 Additionally, it should be noted that if memories are
intense enough the experience of habitual community can almost seem actual, in the
moment, and living. Walther does not dismiss the possibility that the reactivation
of habits may cause one to experience intense, actual experiences of community in
which the intentional object of union is once again present.
Walther’s understanding of communion “overturns” classical sociological posi-
tions, which describe community in more naturalistic or empirical terms as opposed to
more intentional and phenomenological ones. Walther views her work as a “Coper-
nican turn of sociology.”26 Although Walther takes a phenomenological view of
community, she admits that the social life of community is still regulated by laws
and norms, and that the community neither strictly depends on one individual mem-
ber nor on the sum of individuals’ relations. She does maintain, however, following
Hegel, that a single, spiritual individual is able to express the existence of the com-
munity.27 At this point one must ask: Where do the lived experiences of community
of individual members reside? She maintains that they dwell and are actualized in
each individual28 member’s I-center. This does not mean that the community arises
out of each single individual, in “isolated selves”; rather, it surges in the I and in the
other, in the we, understood as human beings whose I can become a unity.29 The lived
experiences are communal in and of themselves, even before they reach the individ-
ual: they arise in an I, but are of a we.30 The presupposition of the full constitution of
an objective and real community must always be the fulfillment of the intentions of
every human being through their own real, direct, and indirect experiences. Hence,
this real experience is the source of influence of one member on another.31 Actions,
then, can be carried out in the name of the community because of this real, mutual
influence of one member on another: once members are conscious of the sense of the
unity of members they can properly assume a position in the world as a community.32
Communal actions, then, cannot be understood, according to Walther, simply as a
sum total of actions, for the mutual recognition of the members of community as
real subjects, always through the I-centers of the members, is required for willed
actions to be actualized. The existence of the community depends on the recogni-
tion of the union, and members feel and live the union as part of their being-in the
community.33 Walther claims that community may be localized in individuals in five
important ways: in the true real, metaphysical, fundamental essence of its members;
in the social self; in social acts; in the body and biological life of its members; and
in an objective, material, and spiritual entity that is created for each member of the
community.
The reality of the community is fundamentally dependent on the “social self” of
its members, who are conscious of their communal essence as stemming from the we
of a social self. This essence is “incarnated” and rooted in individual members. The
lived experience is real and is not a mere appearance. It should be remarked here that,
although one may live the deep union of community, as grasped by Walther, not all the
lived experience of individual members in the community is reducible to the oneness
of the social self; rather, individuals simultaneously experience themselves as private
persons. If one experiences oneself only as a private individual or as belonging to
another community, one may not experience the union, life, or objects of a given
community. But, a private individual may also dwell in a community despite not
living the union. A community, then, could be less than the sum of its members and
their lived experiences.34 For Walther, then, the most intense form of community
requires that members live its true essence of oneness, which is not only lived and
incarnated within individuals, but is also externalized in the communal behavior and
actions of members. This form of community is understood to be real and absolute
in the metaphysical sense of the term.35
Walther’s understanding of community gives rise to an important question: What
happens to the community when one individual member, for whatever reason, under-
goes some kind of internal transformation or new development and no longer expe-
riences himself or herself as belonging to the community? Walther argues that even
though there may be a change of the noetic content of an individual member the
community still persists as experienced by the other members.36 This persistence
is possible because the community dwells within a social or communal self, a we,
that continues to exist through the social drives of others, who continue to affect and
32 Emanuele Caminada, “Joining the Background: Habitual Sentiments behind We-Intentionality”,
in Institutions, Emptions and Group Agents: Contributions to Social Ontology, ed. by Anita Konzel-
mann Ziv and Hans Bernhard Schmid (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 195–212, 209.
33 Ales Bello and Marina Pia Pellegrino, Incontri possibili, 55.
34 Walther, “Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” 126.
110 M. Massa
influence one another. Each member’s I-center continues to live the community in
a real sense despite the change of one individual member.37 Moreover, the habits
of the other members may permit the community to continue to persist at a passive
level.
Up until this point we have discussed the phenomenon of community as expe-
rienced from within lived experience. But, what about community as externally
experienced? Walther points to the lived body and various phenomena of expres-
sion that communicate the life and essence of the community. But, to grasp from an
external perspective what individual members are experiencing, empathy is required
to understand the intended meaning of the individual members’ own experiences of
community.38 Here, the traditional Husserlian framework of intentionality, noesis,
and noema may be applied. Walther admits that, although one may deploy empathy
to understand another individual’s experience of community, empathy alone may not
grasp the full experience of community because of its limited inter-subjective focus
(that is, empathy as an act only allows one individual to grasp the lived experience
of another individual, but it may not fully be capable of presentifying the collective
experience of intimate union that is defining for Walther’s view of community).
Conclusion
Walther’s understanding of community is interesting not only because it draws from

the work of Pfänder, Husserl, and Stein, but also because of its grasp of the par-
ticularity of we-experience. Admittedly, as Ales Bello39 has pointed out, although
Walther’s analysis captures an important aspect of communal experience one must
not be too quick to deploy her description to understand all forms of community,
especially given that Walther’s own views were deeply influenced by her own involve-
ment in the Social Democratic Party and her Marxist thinking. Walther’s analysis
could have benefited from a stricter phenomenological understanding of the law and
the state, and how these particular social objectivities condition community, espe-
cially in relation to judgment (about what is right and/or wrong, for example) and
decision-making. Heidegger remarks that human beings are free and possess freedom
of choice; they are Sein-können. A broader discussion of a community’s experience
of freedom, perhaps outside the narrow confines of acts of will, if this is even possi-
ble, may be viewed as extending Walther’s analysis, especially at the level of social
and political institutions. Moreover, although the foregoing consideration may have
helped Walther extend her analysis of the objective life of community, it in no way
takes anything away from her rich and provocative description of the interiority of
community.
37 Walther,“Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” 135.

38 Walther,“Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” 156.
39 Ales Bello and Marina Pia Pellegrino, Incontri possibili, 34.
Manuela Massa is a lecturer at Martin Luther University of Halle (Saale). She specializes in
Heidegger and Wittgenstein. She is the author of various essays including “Selbstbestimmung
und ‘Daseinsbefreiung’: Annäherungen an einen Rechtsbegriff in Heideggers Frühphilosophie”,
in Perspektiven mit Heidegger. Zugänge—Pfade—Anknüpfungen, ed. by Gerhard Thonhauser,
2017; “Logos und Nomos bei Heidegger und Schmitt”, in Regelfolgen, Regelschaffen, Regelän-
derung. Die Herausforderung für Auto-Nomie und Universalismus durch Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Martin Heidegger und Carl Schmitt, ed. by Manuela Massa, Stefan Knauß, James Thompson,
and Matthias Kaufmann, 2018; “The Reinstatement of the Phenomenon: Hedwig Conrad-Martius
and the Meaning of ‘Being’”, in Women Phenomenologists in Social Ontology, 2018. Until 2013
Manuela worked on a project financed by the DFG (German Research Foundation) called “De
Iustita et Iure of Luis de Molina”, which she transcribed. With a scholarship from the Landes-
graduiertenförderung des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt, she began work on her Ph.D. thesis, “Sprache,
Ethik, Leben bei Heidegger und Wittgenstein”. From September 2016 until June 2017, with a
DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Scholarship, Manuela was a visiting scholar at the
Husserl Archive in Leuven where she studied the connection between Husserl and Wittgenstein.
Manuela completed her doctoral thesis with the help of a FAZIT Stiftung Scholarship, which she
defended in July 2018. Her areas of philosophical interest are early phenomenology, political phi-
losophy, and philosophy of law.
Part III
Religion and Mysticism
Phenomenology of Mysticism,
Introduction and Chapter One
Rodney K. B. Parker
Abstract Gerda Walther considered her Phänomenologie der Mystik to be her main
philosophical work. Informed by her own alleged mystical experiences, this work
attempts to show how spiritual beings are distinct from merely psychical beings,
and that mystical lived-experiences and their objects can be distinguished from other
forms of experience. Included here is a translation of the Introduction and Chapter
One from the 1976 edition of Phänomenologie der Mystik, which outline her phe-
nomenological approach to the study of mystical experience and her concept of the
ego.
Keywords Mystical lived-experience · Ego-center
Translator’s Preface
Alhough it has received far less attention in recent philosophical discussions than her
dissertation “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” Gerda Walther consid-
ered her Phänomenologie der Mystik to be her main philosophical work. She began
writing it in early 1920 upon returning to Munich from Freiburg to finish writing her
dissertation. It first took shape as a manuscript titled “Ein Beitrag zur (bewusstseins-
mäßigen) inneren Konstitution des eigenen Grundwesens als Kernpunkt der Per-
1 This manuscript can be found in Walther’s Nachlass in the Bavarian State Library in Munich under
the signature Ana 317 A.III.2.1—Die innere Bewußtseinskonstitution des eigenen Grundwesens als
Kern der Persönlichkeit.
Gerda Walther: deceased.

Translated and edited by Rodney K. B. Parker.
R. K. B. Parker (B)
Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists/Department of Philosophy,
e-mail: rodney.k.b.parker@gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_9
116 R. K. B. Parker
sönlichkeit (und Gottes)” (A.III.2.1), which she presented to her teacher Alexander
1
Pfänder in honor of his 50th birthday. As the title suggests, the original manuscript
was a reflection on the ego and the self (and the experience of other egos), and is only
tangentially concerned with the Divine. However, this evolved into the phenomeno-
logical investigation of religious and mystical experience presented here. This was
a drastic move away from the naturalistic and historical materialisms that she had
dogmatically accepted growing up as an atheist and Marxist.
There are three editions of Walther’s Phänomenologie der Mystik. The first was
published by Max Niemeyer in Halle in 1923. The second and third editions were
published by Otto Walter in Olten and Freiburg in 1955 and 1976, respectively. As
Walther explains in her short Preface to the third edition, the changes between the
second and third are minor—corrections of typographical errors and some improve-
ments to the notes. The changes between the first and second edition, however, were
significant. Between 1923 and 1955 Walther attended lectures on psychology and
psychiatry, worked in a state mental hospital, began studying parapsychology, and
had a number of what she believed to be genuine mystical experiences. All of this
led to an extensive reworking and expansion of the later chapters of the book. How-
ever, what I take to be the core philosophical theses remained the same: (1) that the
capacities for free-will, self-consciousness, and empathy distinguish spiritual beings
from merely psychical beings2 ; (2) that mystical experiences and their objects are
distinct from both sense perceptions and the representations of dreams, imagination,
memory, and hallucination; and (3) that the purported phenomenological equiva-
lence between mystical experiences and the experiences of the mentally ill is not as
great as some would claim.3 Points (1) and (2) are dealt with in the Introduction and
Chapter One, which remained nearly identical in all versions. Those are the sections
translated here.
What follows is not the first attempt at an English translation of Phänomenologie
der Mystik. That distinction goes to none other than Walther herself. The unpublished
manuscript, “On the phenomenology of mysticism” (A.III.2.2),4 is a rough translation
of the Introduction through to the first pages of Chapter Four of the 1923 edition of
Walther’s book. The text bears no date, and could have been written at any time
between 1923 and 1955, since we know that Walther was all but fluent in English
since childhood.5 However, the text presented here is not merely a transcription of
2 Unfortunately, Walther’s discussion of empathy does not arise until Chap. 3 and as such is not
included here.
3 For a detailed overview of Walther’s book see Henry Corbin’s review (in French) of the second
edition, published in Revue de l’histoire des religions 153(1), 1958, pp. 92–101.
4 Ana 317 A.III.2.2—Englische Übersetzung von “On the phenomenology of mysticism.” The
manuscript consists of 63 handwritten sheets—a 61-page first draft and 2 pages of a second. There
appear to be pages missing, since the final page from the first draft cuts off mid-word (“It is as if
the ego was here precipitating itself into an endless abyss where there is no embodiment and no
ob-…”).
5 In a letter found in the Nachlass of Herbert Spiegelberg housed at the Bavarian State Library,
Walther writes: “As you were wondering whether I can read English, I guess I must show you I can!
Indeed, I have been talking, writing, reading, thinking in English ever since my childhood, as my
Phenomenology of Mysticism, Introduction and Chapter One 117
A.III.2.2. It is my translation of sections from the third edition of Phänomenologie

der Mystik, using Walther’s unfinished draft translation of the first edition as a guide.
I often rely on her translation to determine how to render certain technical terms and
complicated sentences into English. That said, I do not follow her at every turn.
Throughout the text, I have translated Gegeben and Gegebenheit as “given”
and “givenness.” I have also attempted to render consistently Erleben as “lived-
experience” and Erfahren as “experience,” although it is unclear if Walther means
something different by these two terms. Grundwesen has been translated as “basic
essence,” but it is worth noting that in A.III.2.2 Walther translates the occurrence of
Grundwesen on < 34 > below as “entelechy.” Throughout A.III.2.2 Walther switches
between translating Gott as “the Divine” and “God.” I have opted to translate always
Gott as “the Divine.” She also often uses “intellect (or reason)” to translate Ver-
stand, and I have employed this convention throughout my translation. I have cho-
sen to translate Seele as “psyche” rather than “soul,” and on this point the reader
should see Note 30. In A.III.2.2 Walther translates Ich as both “I” and “ego,” some-
times even writing “the I, the ego.” I use “I” and “ego” interchangeably here. I have
also translated leibhaftig alternately as “bodily” and “in the flesh.” Finally, whereas
Walther translates Ichzentrum as “central ego,” I have translated this as “ego-centre”.
The pagination from the 1976 edition of Phänomenologie der Mystik is indicated
throughout using < angle brackets > , and in a handful of cases I have included the
original German in [square brackets].
Where there are noteworthy deviations from the first edition of Phänomenologie
der Mystik, these have been indicated in the translator’s footnotes. One change of
particular interest is the removal of references to August Faust in the later editions.
This choice on Walther’s part was no doubt due to Faust’s affiliation with the Nation-
alist Socialist Party. These references have been restored in my translation, since
they were as a matter of historical fact sources for Walther’s work. However, in the
footnote on < 23 > , Walther did not include a complete reference in the 1923 edition,
and so I was unable to add a book or paper title.
It may also be of some interest to the reader that the copy of the first edition
of Phänomenologie der Mystik that I used for comparing the texts came from the
personal library of Herbert Spiegelberg, now part of library holdings of Washington
University in St. Louis. Walther herself had sent the book to Spiegelberg in 1954,6
and a number of notes and deletions marked in the text were written by Walther
herself. For example, from the second edition onward the reference to theosophy and
the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner on < 33 > were omitted. This same passage is
father was the owner of an international sanatorium for consumptives in the Black Forest, and about
1/3 or 1/2 of the patients came from the British Commonwealth or the United States” (Ana 387
E.II—Brief von Gerda Walther (24.XI.1953)). It should be noted here that the translation presented
in A.III.2.2 is far from perfect. Walther consistently makes grammatical errors and mistranslates
certain words into English. This sometimes results in ambiguous and nonsensical passages.
6 The dedication inside the front cover reads: “Herrn Dr. Herbert Spiegelberg in Erinnerung an die
gemeinsamen ‘geistigen Ursprünge’ mit herzlichen Grüßen! Dr. Gerda Walther, München 1954.”
The common “spiritual origins” referred to here likely relate to their mutual teacher, Alexander
Pfänder.
118 R. K. B. Parker
crossed out in the copy of the first edition that Walther sent to Spiegelberg. Most of
her handwritten changes are minor, but there is no doubt that the handwriting is hers.
Phenomenology of Mysticism
Gerda Walther
Introduction: Limitations of Our Method and Objects

of Inquiry
< 21 > It appears imprudent to undertake an attempt to grasp the mystical phe-
nomenologically, to analyze that which is completely obscure, irrational, and in the
opinion of many absolutely ineffable and unknowable with the help of a scientific
method of reasoning. Nevertheless, if we attempt to do so, then we need to offer
some justification for and be aware of certain limitations of such an undertaking. Let
us begin by briefly clarifying what a phenomenology of mysticism can and cannot
accomplish.
What a phenomenology of mysticism cannot and will not attempt to do is give a
possible natural, causal explanation or reduction of mystical facts according to the
principles of natural science. If something of that sort were at all possible—and I
am convinced that it is not possible—it is certainly not the task of a phenomenology
of mysticism to provide it. Neither can it be to prove definitely or refute certain
opinions about the mystical on the basis of logical conclusions and suppositions
about the nature of reality, nor can a phenomenology of mysticism prove the pos-
sibility or impossibility of something being accessible to human beings according
to prejudices about the nature of human understanding.7 For the mystical is an irre-
ducible, primordial phenomenon, a basic, primordial givenness that cannot be traced
back to or derived from some other phenomena, such as colors, sounds, values, and
so on. And these basic, primordial phenomena are what we want to examine here
without prejudice, just as they present themselves in lived-experience to those who
have had mystical lived-experiences. In these investigations we want to remain as
close as possible < 22 > to these mystical lived-experiences, doing nothing other than
highlighting that which is essential in them, by sharply distinguishing and character-
izing all the essential aspects of these lived-experiences, so that they can be grasped
according to their sense and the originality of their essential qualities, and, as far
as possible, to distinguish them from givens that are seemingly similar, but which
are essentially different.8 Likewise, by way of our investigations we will attempt to
contribute to the solution of the question of whether mystical lived-experiences truly
7 An important book dealing with these and other problems is Edith Landmann-Kalischer, Die
Transzendenz des Erkennens (Berlin 1923).
8 See Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie, Vol. I (Halle 1913), p. 96ff., and
August Faust, “Der dichterische Ausdruck mystischer Religiosität bei Rainer Maria Rilke,” Logos,
Vol. XI (1922), p. 226.
are or can be what they claim to be (namely, real, “bodily” lived-experiences of the
Divine).9 Here, we will count among mystical lived-experiences only those lived-
experiences that claim to be direct, bodily (though perhaps imperfect and one-sided)
experiences of the Divine itself . For if there is any experience of the Divine at all, if
our opinions about the Divine and our relations to it are not based on pure phantasy,
or, as opponents of religion claim, on “blind” belief in traditional dogmas (which,
again, if there were no bodily experience of the Divine, would be based on phantasy,
or at best upon mere improvable conjectures and conclusions), then surely it must
be a real experience of the Divine, even if it is not complete.10 For the objection
that we merely have to believe the revelations of the Divine handed down to us by
the churches only shifts the question of an original, bodily experience of the Divine
without resolving it. Certainly, if we are not able to have such immediate experiences
of the Divine, then we must believe in the revelations that have been told directly or
handed down to us. But, what about these revelations themselves? Those who com-
municate them to us, and those from whom they are ultimately < 23 > transmitted to
us, assert that those individuals who have had mystical experiences have received
them directly from the Divine. But, then there must also be an immediate, original,
bodily lived-experience of the Divine, if not experienced by us, then at the very least
by a “medium,” back to which our knowledge of the Divine may ultimately be traced.
Thus, we cannot avoid assuming an immediate experience of the Divine, and this
according to the statements of all mystics is found with the greatest perfection and
certainty in mystical lived-experience.
For example, Brother Aegidius (Giles of Assisi) once said, “I know a man who
saw God so clearly that he lost all faith.” Brother Andreas (Andrew of Burgundy)
said, “If you do not have faith, what would you do if you were a priest and had
to celebrate High Mass? How could you say, ‘I believe in one God’? It seems that
you would have to say, ‘I know one God.’” Then Brother Aegidius answered with
a joyous countenance and sang in a loud voice, “I know one God, the Almighty
Father.”11
9 On the concept of “bodilyness” see E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie, Vol. I (Halle
1913), p. 43ff., 70ff., 79ff., 209ff., 283, and Hedwig Conrad-Martius, “Realontologie,” Jahrbuch
für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. VI (1923), p. 165ff. [7ff.], Sections 8 and
9, and pp. 188ff. [30ff.], §29, and most importantly her remarks on p. 189ff. [31ff.] in Sect. 29.
Incidentally, I do not agree with the view expressed here that “God in the full and strict sense cannot
be given bodily to any earthly creature” (p. 165 (resp. 7), Sect. 9), that “God in a final sense is not to
be encountered by anyone,” as I have indicated above. I hope that this will be further strengthened
in the course of these investigations. Only for completely adequate knowledge of God would I
admit this, but not for bodilyness. For something can very well be given bodily without being given
completely and “from all sides.” For example, when the moon shines unobscured in the sky, it is
given to us bodily in perception (not in imagination, memory, or merely in thought), yet it is not
fully given to us because of its distance from us and because we only see it from one side.
10 See also E. Landmann-Kalisher, Die Transzendenz des Erkennens (Berlin 1923), Chap. 1, and
p. 273ff.
11 See Martin Buber, Ekstatische Konfessionen (Leipzig 1921), p. 69; p. 136 (Angela di Foligno)
and p. 141 (Catherine of Genoa). See also August Faust, Logos, p. 20 and Teresa of Ávila, Die
Seelenburg (Regensburg 1922), V. 1. 10.
120 R. K. B. Parker
We want, therefore, to investigate those lived-experiences which, according to

their own inner sense, claim to present the Divine, although imperfectly, in true given-
ness, in which, according to their inner quality, a direct manifestation, revelation, or
appearance of the Divine comes to givenness. All and only such lived-experiences, as
has already been said, are to be counted as mystical lived-experiences. By no means
are we to understand by mystical lived-experiences only mystical ecstasy (that is, a
complete possession by or immersion in the Divine), although such lived-experiences
come nearest to the sense and purpose of mystical lived-experience (that is, the most
complete and adequate givenness of the Divine that any created being can possibly
attain). However, communion in the sense of the Catholic Church, as the bodily
presence of Christ, may also be connected with mystical lived-experiences.12
<24 > In order to approach mystical lived-experiences in a truly unbiased way,
one must first of all beware of two prejudices. One is based on the opinion that it is
impossible for a human to experience the Divine “in the flesh”; what mystics experi-
ence in such lived-experiences is only a manifestation of their own psyche, their own
deepest, basic essence. During ordinary, everyday life, this basic essence generally
remains hidden in the depths of one’s inner being, and when it suddenly enters into
conscious awareness it is mistaken for a revelation of the Divine.13 This view is the
late offspring of the obsolete psychologistic theories of knowledge, which have par-
tial roots in Kant. This view has survived in other areas14 and apparently continues to
go unchecked in our domain of inquiry. It is high time that it is finally here overcome.
The second prejudice is inherited from British empiricism, culminating in the asser-
tation that whatever is the object of consciousness, whatever can be experienced by
us, is transmitted to us, directly or indirectly, only through the aid of the outer bodily
senses and their “data” (colors, sounds, tastes, smells, tactile sensations). According
to this view, it is impossible that something could be experienced that is not founded
on the “categorial formation” and “meaning-giving tinging” of these sense data, even
though it may be so by virtue of many detours and stratifications.15 The first of these
prejudices can only be completely refuted in the course of our investigations and on
the basis of their results (see especially Chaps. 18 and 19). The second seems to be
confirmed by the fact that in the writings of mystics one can find many references to
such sense data (of fragrances, pleasant tastes, sweet feelings, light, warmth, sounds,
and so on). However, these are certainly only analogies. For how could mystics even
convey a vague approximation of the “absolutely other” to those who have < 25 > not
experienced it, if not by referring to the familiar givens of everyday life? The fact that
these are and can only be grossly imperfect analogies must be emphasized repeatedly
in the strongest terms. (Time and again mystics have asserted that only those who
12 See, for example, Lucie Christine, Geistliches Tagebuch (1870–1908), 5th edn. (Mainz 1975).
13 Even M. Buber in the Foreword to his Ekstatischen Konfessionen comes to this same view. See
also Ernst Gundolf, Nietzsche als Richter unserer Zeit (Breslau 1923), p. 43.
14 See, for example, H. Conrad-Martius, “Zur Ontologie und Erscheinungslehre der realen Außen-
welt,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. III (1916).
15 Otto Gründler as well was unable to free himself from this prejudice. See his Elementen zu einer
Religionsphilosophie auf phänomenologischer Grundlage (Munich 1922), especially p. 5.

In A.III.2.2 Walther cites Husserl here instead of Gründler.—Translator’s note.
know from their own lived-experience what these analogies symbolize can com-
pletely understand such analogies.16 But, of course, such a person no longer needs
them.) Imagine that four fifths of humankind were born blind, and only one fifth
were able to see. Suppose that the one fifth tried to convey to the other four fifths
even the slightest idea of what they experience when they see colors. How should
the “seers” do so if not by referring, as well or poorly as they can, to what is famil-
iar to the other four fifths? To do so, they would have to translate, as it were, the
colors into another domain (for example, that of sounds). There would be no other
way. And then, perhaps, they would refer to the feeling that bright, “harsh” colors
arouse in them and compare it with the sensations they experience when listening to
“bright” major chords and high, treble notes, and perhaps compare the deep, dark,
warm colors with certain minor chords and bass notes. (Some people, who are capa-
ble of experiencing such relations, claim, for example, that they always “see” liquid
silver when listening to the music of Brünnhilde’s awakening in Wagner’s Siegfried.)
Perhaps they would succeed in establishing here a fixed system of relations, which
is connected to a certain something that these two otherwise different spheres have
in common (perhaps one could call it the metaphysical essence), and which justi-
fies precisely these analogies and comparisons (in contrast < 26 > to any other ones,
which may at first seem possible but are simply arbitrary). One could then speak of
greater or lesser degrees of “correctness” and “adequacy” in using these analogies
for translating from one domain to another. And there would be, so to speak, better or
worse, or even completely wrong use of analogies, which everyone who would give
the color blind an idea of colors in the language of sounds must take as a model for
judging the correctness of their translations. If there really were essentially fixed rela-
tions here, then everybody able to see would have to use the same tones and sounds
for the same colors as other color-seers do, even without knowing it. But those who
only ever hear sounds and tones could have but a very faint and unclear picture of
the colors being presented to them. Only if they were suddenly able to “see” could
they fully comprehend what was meant, and they would then realize that the use of
certain sounds and tones as a symbol for certain colours was entirely appropriate
based on an inner lawfulness and truth regarding the relations between sounds and
colors. If they were only capable of seeing one color, or a group of colors, at first,
even if they were still partially color blind, then they would have already been given
the key to the whole world of colors and its representation in the world of sounds.
It is exactly the same in the case of mysticism. All that the mystics say about
light, sweet feelings, and fragrances, or darkness, black clouds, and so on, is nothing
other than a translation of purely spiritual lived-experiences into the sphere of sense
perception. This is shown by the strange consistency in the application of certain
identical symbols for the representation of certain mystical < 27 > lived-experiences.
However, the fact that only a small part of humankind has so far experienced the
purely spiritual givens of mysticism that are symbolically represented in this way is
no more a proof against the correctness of the information given above than it would
16 See Teresa of Ávila, Die Seelenburg (Regensburg 1922), VI. 5. 5, p. 194ff.

122 R. K. B. Parker
be in other domains.17 Only a fraction of all people are able to understand the most
advanced levels of mathematics, such as analysis, function theory, set theory, and so
on. Nevertheless, we do not consider the mathematicians who do research in these
areas to be engaged in mere arbitrary phantasy, lies, or self-deception with respect
to these objects and their relations. On the contrary, one would regard it as a sign
of great ignorance and arrogance if someone who did not understand these things
were to dismiss or object to the assertions of such researchers simply because they
lacked any knowledge of them. Why, then, is mysticism not afforded the same just
treatment?
I have spoken above about the “spiritual givens” of mysticism. Evidently, I do
not mean purely intellectual givens or phenomena, although the intellect (or reason)
has again and again been confounded with the spirit, to the great detriment of both.18
By intellect (or reason), we mean here the whole domain of consciousness that
engages in analyzing, associating (comparing, distinguishing, separating, and so
forth), systematizing, and defining (but not the intuiting of metaphysical essences).
In short, thinking in the strictest sense. Insofar as it is related to particular objects
(be they real or ideal in nature, be they human beings or animals, and so on, or
coordinate systems of analytic geometry, etc.), the intellect (or reason) is dependent
upon < 28 > other modes of consciousness, which provide it with the concrete (in
the widest sense) material upon which it then carries out its investigations. Without
these other modes of consciousness (for example, sense perception), the intellect (or
reason) is entirely helpless, has no foundation, and hangs in the air, without them
it cannot even “think” [spintisieren] properly. These other modes of consciousness,
upon which the intellect (or reason) depends, can be among other things external,
sensual, supernatural [übersinnlicher], psychical, or purely spiritual in nature. For
example, the sensory perception of colors, sounds, smells, etc., and the experience19
of bodily objects that are based on these (and not merely belonging to the intellect or
reason), such as humans, animals, plants, rocks, and so on, belong, on the one hand,
to those modes of consciousness upon which the intellect (or reason) is absolutely
dependent for all concrete “material” statements, investigations, and knowledge. On
the other hand, purely “spiritual” data and the experiences founded upon them are
just as fundamental for the intellect (or reason), and it is precisely these data and
experiences that one generally chooses to overlook, ignore, or confound with other
things. But just as little as the intellect (or reason) is capable of carrying out a valid
investigation of the external world, of nature in the broadest sense of the word, without
basing it on bodily sense perceptions and the experiences founded upon them and
without strictly adhering to what is given in them, in the same way it is not possible
17 See also E. Landmann-Kalisher, Die Transzendenz des Erkennens (Berlin 1923), Chap. 1, and
p. 277ff.
18 Thus, for example, among other things, Ludwig Klages’ attacks on the “spirit” and “spiritual-
ization” seem to almost consistently be attacks on intellect [Intellekt] and intellectualization, but
not the spirit in the strict sense. See my paper, “Ludwig Klages und sein Kampf gegen den Geist,”
Philosophischer Anzeiger III.1 (1928).
19 It has been called “categorial intuition,” but we will avoid this word here, since certain epistemo-
logical and metaphysical views are typically associated with it that we will not discuss here.
in the domain of the psyche and the spirit if the intellect (or reason) does not adhere
closely to spiritual perceptions and the experiences founded upon them.20
Apart from sense perceptions and the experiences founded upon them, along with
merely “empty” thoughts, there is now a great deal of talk about memories, represen-
tations [Vorstellungen], and < 29 > beliefs [Meinen] (without an intuitive representa-
tion) in psychology and epistemology. These memories, representations, and so on
are often described as something purely psychical, or purely spiritual in comparison
to sense perception. So, it seems reasonable to believe that what we mean by “spiri-
tual” data and “spiritual” experience is nothing other than imagined representations
and so on. However, what we mean is an essentially different, independent given,
which stands over-against these representations in spiritual perception, just as in
sense perception. This follows already from the fact that memories, representations,
mere beliefs, and so on, may be of both sensual perceptions/experiences and spiritual
perceptions/experiences. So, these representations, etc., cannot be identified with the
latter.
For example, we can have a vivid memory of the house we grew up in, the
furniture, the colors and patterns of the carpets in its rooms and the like, without
having it before our eyes (perhaps it does not even exist anymore), or we can think
of it without having it clearly before us in our mind, or we can imagine/represent
something more or less vividly without ever having perceived it. (For example, the
glass mountain on top of which the princess’s castle lies and that the knight must ride
up on horseback, which is mentioned in so many fairy tales.) Without any doubt, all
this is given to us in a fundamentally different way from when we perceive something
with one or more of our senses, which stands now before us and is bodily given to
us in outer perception. If we look at a flower that is standing in front of us, it is
given to us in a fundamentally different way than when we merely remember it,
merely < 30 > imagine it, or think of it. Likewise, when we hear a sound or a piece
of music, when we smell the scent of roasted coffee as we pass by a café, or when
we stroke a piece of velvet and feel its distinctive softness, and so on. In all these
cases we have, purely due to the givenness of these objects to consciousness in their
bodily presence, the real objects themselves in full self-givenness, in contrast to mere
imagined representations, memories, and so on, which, no matter how intensely we
concentrate on them, never give us an original perception of the objects themselves,
but only their inner givenness, according to the manner in which the things stand
before us. (No logical conclusions, proofs, etc., are needed to see that the difference
lies in the givens themselves.)
However, the same occurs with the relation between imagining/representing,
remembering, and “mere” thinking, on the one hand, and psychical and spiritual
perception and experience, on the other. One may clearly imagine the light of the
Divine spirit that is experienced in the unio mystica, or the particular psychic radia-
tion (the aura) of a human being, or one may intensely work oneself into the phantasy
20 See Teresa of Ávila, Die Seelenburg (Regensburg 1922), IV. 3. 2, p. 85; V. 1. 10, p. 107; and
M. Buber, Ekstatische Konfessionen (Leipzig 1921), p. 46 (Jalāl ad-Dı̄n Muhammad Rūmı̄); p. 51

(Plotinus).
124 R. K. B. Parker
of mystical ecstasy (to the point where one believes one has had a lived-experienced
of it), or one may remember such a lived-experience, or intend it in thought. Yet all
this is fundamentally different (according to its inner lived-experiential character)
from those cases in which a psychical or spiritual experience originally presents its
object “in the flesh” to consciousness.21 All of the mystics who have commented
upon this problem fully agree on this point. They have continuously emphasized
that only those who have never had such genuine, bodily mystical lived-experiences,
those who have never had the tertium comparationis—the possibility of comparing
the < 31 > different modes of lived-experience—can confound their unique manner of
givenness.22 This consciousness of the bodily presence of mystical objects (insofar as
one may be permitted to call them “objects” in a loose sense) in these spiritual expe-
riences does not, as one might think, always coincide with a simultaneous experience
of something “in the flesh” given in outer sense perception, such as the perception of
a Divine messenger in the form of a human person.23 However, such a simultaneous
givenness of one and the same object in spiritual as well as outer sense perception, or
some other combination of the two, often occurs. But, this connection is by no means
necessary for the spiritual experience to present its content in bodily givenness. On
the contrary, even with the complete lack of any outer perception (sometimes even
precisely because of this) it can present itself as being absolutely certain and real.24
Lastly, one might be inclined to think that the spiritual perception of which we
have been speaking is the same as what the occult and theosophical circles refer to as
“higher senses,” “paraphysical phenomena,” and so on.25 If these things are genuinely
real, and not merely expressions of the subconscious (see Chaps. 4 and 5), then such
givens will most likely contain some of the data referred to as “supernatural,” but
also what we may refer to with the collective noun “spiritual data,” which includes
their perception.26 However, one must not therefore lump everything together, as if
all spiritual perceptions and experiences must always be about these same data and
experiences, only differing slightly in intensity. On the contrary, although they belong
to the same species, supernatural data and perceptions < 32 > are no more equivalent
to spiritual data and experiences than they are to outer sense perceptions. And just as
it is not the case that because a person has had one kind of perception in the realm of
outer sense perception, and they have therefore already experienced or are therefore
capable of experiencing all other kinds of outer perceptions, it is likewise not so
here either. Let us imagine a person who has lived their entire life since birth in a
coalmine, having only seen things under artificial light. Such a person would certainly
21 See Teresa of Ávila, Die Seelenburg (Regensburg 1922), IV. 3. 3, p. 83ff.; IV. 3.10–17, p. 92ff.;
V. 1. 3ff., p. 100ff.; VI. 3. 10ff., p. 169ff.
22 See Teresa of Ávila, Die Seelenburg (Regensburg 1922), IV. 3. 12; VI. 3. 12, p. 172ff; and her
letter to Father Rodrigo Alvarez (see M. Buber, Ekstatische Konfessionen (Leipzig 1921), p. 145ff.).
23 See Teresa of Ávila, Die Seelenburg (Regensburg 1922), V. 1. 9ff., p. 106ff.
24 See Teresa of Ávila, Die Seelenburg (Regensburg 1922), V. 1. 10, p. 106ff; VI. 8. 3, p. 224ff.
25 In the first edition Walther adds the following sentence: “We know too little about the apparitions
of ‘ghosts’ and the like to be able to say anything about them”.—Translator’s note.
26 In his famous work on Die christliche Mystik (Regensburg 1879/80), Joseph von Görres, unfor-
tunately, does not distinguish between supernatural and mystical lived-experience in the true sense.
know many colors and have some knowledge of the nature of light. Yet, what they
perceive would be limited and dim in comparison to what they would experience if
they were to suddenly step out from this dark, dull shaft into the bright sunlight of a
brilliant day and behold what might be seen there—the sparkling water, the colorful
flowers, the green forests, and so on. Perhaps in that moment they would feel as if
they had only just then learned to see properly, even though they had seen light and
colors before. The same is true of those occult lived-experiences in comparison to
what the mystic sees. To be sure, occult lived-experiences, insofar as they really are
spiritual perceptions, are more closely related to mystical lived-experiences, both
being spiritual experiences, than to outer sense perceptions. Nevertheless, religious
experiences are by no means always connected with an occult lived-experience; they
are only approximately so. It is quite possible that somebody who has had many
occult experiences has not the slightest idea of the bodily religious experiences that
matter to us here. Conversely, there are certainly mytics who have or have not had
occult lived-experiences. This seems to be overlooked or < 33 > underestimated by
many occultists.27 Such people are, therefore, in danger of being so captivated by
their own spiritual lived-experiences and the spiritual lived-experiences of others
that they neglect their own religious life. Above all, the psychologistic prejudice that
confounds the mystical lived-experience of the Divine essence and its emanations
with the lived-experience of one’s own basic essence (or that of others), contributes
greatly to this (see Chap. 16).28 It seems that there is too much talk of human beings
and their hidden powers in some of these modern movements, and too little about
the Divine and the light of its grace, which sometimes radiates into the interior
of human beings. To be sure, those who are capable of psychical–spiritual lived-
experiences will be able to grasp it very well; yet, it can never be called forth solely
by training those “higher faculties of perception,” since those Divine emanations are
a gift springing from and given by the free will of the absolutely free, eternal Divine
person and its grace (see Chaps. 16 and 19).
Nevertheless, experiencing the Divine essence and its emanations, despite all
essential differences, possesses a certain affinity with some parapsychic givens, as
well as the lived-experience of one’s own innermost basic essence (and that of others),
both with regard to its inner content and the way in which it is usually attained by
the person in mystical lived-experience. Therefore, let us begin by examining these
lived-experiences—though, we must emphasize, they are not yet religious—to be
able to grasp the truly religious lived-experiences later on, and to distinguish them
from other types of religious experience.
If we do not confound the spirit with the intellect (or reason), then the Divine
is, as we have already suggested, spiritual. < 34 > But, the innermost, essential core
of human personality, its basic essence, so to speak, is equally spiritual. Therefore,
we must sharply distinguish the intellect (or reason) from the spirit in this sense. If
27 In the first edition Walther states that this has not only been overlooked by many occultists, but
also “theosophists and anthroposophists (perhaps even Rudolf Steiner)”.—Translator’s note.

28 In the first edition Walther adds: “This is already shown by the replacement of the word theosophy
with anthroposophy”.—Translator’s note.

126 R. K. B. Parker
we want to elucidate what we understand by spirit in general and by Divine spirit

in particular in the most appropriate way possible, then the best way to proceed is
by way of examining the basic essence of human beings, if only because, according
to the opinion of all theologians and mystics, among all other things given in the
real world, this has the greatest affinity with the Divine essence. And, also, because
one of the main paths leading to a bodily intuition of the Divine leads from the inner
depths, the basic essence of the person, through and beyond it. We will therefore look
for a way to grasp our own personal basic essence, and then to grasp the essential
grounding of this basic essence (that is, the Divine). < 35>
Chapter One: The Ego as Centre of Lived-Experience29
If we know anything at all about human beings, it is that we find ourselves in both
an inner and an outer world, but we are first and foremost entangled in the outer
world, as if enchanted by it. An urban or a rural world surrounds us: with our eyes
we plunge into it, hear its noises, take in its smells. In part, it stands before us “in
the flesh,” and in part it reminds us of earlier lived-experiences, and these earlier
lived-experiences are either more or less vividly placed before us, or are thought
in only an abstract way. Other human beings also significantly belong to this outer
world. We know about ourselves that in this world we like this and not that, that we
like to do this and not that, that this or that is pleasing or unpleasing, and so on. Here
too we are grasping ourselves, above all, in our relationship to the outer world, and
in our opinions of it. It is mirrored, so to speak, in us: we experience ourselves in the
first place in terms of our reactions to these mirror images. But how do we actually
find ourselves independent of these reflections, independent of the external world?
Should we not do as little Alice from the fairy tale did, who stepped into the mirror
and discovered on the other side a new, undreamt-of “Wonderland”? Undoubtedly,
we must likewise seek the new, wonderful world of the psyche, of the spirit.30
29 The title of this chapter in the first edition is “The Inner Givenness of the Psychical
and the Spiritual” [Die innere Gegebenheit des Seelischen und Geistigen].—Translator’s note.
30 This paragraph replaces the following from the first edition: “The human being is not only a
spiritual being, but is, above all, an ensouled being or, since we want to reserve the term ‘soul’
for a particular aspect of its basic essence, a psychical being. And among all the natural givens of
the world, it is again the psychic that has the greatest inner affinity with spirit. Indeed, this affinity
is so great that it is often said that there is only the psyche, and that the so-called spirit is only a
variant of it. (On the distinction between the “psyche” (“soul”) and spirit see H. Conrad-Martius,
Metaphysische Gespräche (Halle 1921).) What is the psyche and where do we find it?
Undoubtedly, we, first and foremost, grasp the psychical in our own “mental life” [Seelenleben]
when we look at it “from the inside.” But, when we plunge into our “interior,” we find all sorts of
bodily [Körperliches] feelings as well, so we need to be more specific about what the psychical is
before we go further. In addition to humans, we also consider animals to be psychical beings, while
plants are not psychical, and stones and other “inorganic” substances are even less so. But, what
is it that distinguishes animals from plants? Certainly, it must be consciousness (that is, the ability
to know something, to experience something, the ability to think, to know, to want, to value, etc.,
The first thing we are always confronted with, and without which we could not
know or state anything at all, is that we are always “intending-something,” “thinking-
about-something,” or inwardly “referring-to-something,”31 all of which emanates
from us, from our I. I see, I see something (the thing seen); I love, I love something
(the beloved); I hate, I hate something, and < 36 > this occurs in all lived experiences.
This I from which the lived-experience emanates is always in me, with me. The I is
also perhaps the first thing I find in this turning back, still in the looking glass, but
no longer part of the mirror image. I experience … what does this mean? It means
that there is a “zero point” in my inner being, so to speak, the point from which my
lived-experience emanates, which seems to be inwardly situated, as if in my head
(at least I seem to immediately experience it as such), and which in all my lived-
experiences consciously directs itself to the objects of experience.32 We will call this
point the I-point or the ego-center. To begin with, we cannot say much more than
that we experience it as the starting point of our consciousness, from which the inner
direction of our minds, our intentions with respect to objects, issues, however else
this inner direction may be characterized (as thinking, desiring, loving, hating, etc.).
If we examine everything we discover in our conscious lived-experience, we find
as I have said not only that I experience something, but that I experience something
in various ways. Quietly looking out my window at the street below is quite different
from when I am looking down at that same street with expectation because I am
waiting for someone who has yet to arrive. It is again different when I look at the
same street and am overjoyed at its delicate beauty in the glow of the evening sun. It is
true that here I am always looking out onto the same street, but my lived-experience
is at the same time always different—sometimes joyous, sometimes sad, sometimes
indifferent, sometimes searching. At one time I may look at the street with strained
attention, at others I am thinking of everything else, I am inattentive, absent-minded.
to be inwardly directed at something and this ‘self-directedness at’ itself, which cannot be reduced
further, that we all more or less know by the name “consciousness”). But, consciousness has always
been regarded as something essentially spiritual, as the most essential aspects of spirit, even if one
does not confound it with intellect or reason. How then can the merely psychic be distinguished
from pre-psychic life? Or is the moment of knowing only psychical and not yet spiritual? Even
in loving, esteeming, valuing, etc., we find that moment of “intending-something,” which we call
consciousness, although all these impulses are not purely intellectual or rational, and so cannot be
peculiar to reason alone. But what about spirit? Undoubtedly, animals are also capable of intending
something. One could not possibly imagine any psychical being in which there is no sense of
aiming or “intending-something,” “thinking-about-something” broadly understood, that we call
consciousness. Here then we have the essential difference between psychic and pre-psychic life, for
certainly we must expect consciousness to be something psychical unless we want to count animals
too among the spiritual beings. (The moment of consciousness is, then, the essential characteristic
of the psyche. Nevertheless, as we shall see, the moment of consciousness already contains the
essential germ for the emergence of the spiritual from the psychical.) But, what does this psyche
look like? What do we experience when we grasp ourselves as psychic beings?”—Translator’s note.
31 Husserl calls this intention, intentionality [Intentionalität], the most important “primordial phe-
nomenon” of consciousness. See E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie, Vol. I (Halle
1913).
32 In the first edition the following sentence is added: “Incidentally, this inner ‘self-awareness’ of
consciousness has been called ‘intention’ [Intendieren]”.—Translator’s note.

128 R. K. B. Parker
All of this is surely to be distinguished from the ego that “looks,” even though these
ways of looking seem to emanate from the I and are not < 37 > separated from it in
any way, spatially or otherwise. And among these too such lived-experiences are
obviously quite different; the inner lived-experience of love is entirely different from
that of hate, or of mere perception, thinking, imagining, and so on. We must therefore
differentiate lived-experiences from the ego, and, also, the different kinds of lived-
experiences from each other. But, how is it that the lived-experiences emanate from
the I? Do we really have the inner feeling of experiencing as if the lived-experience
emerged from the ego? As long as we are examining a lived-experience into which
we (our ego) have already inwardly entered, in which we are living, this seems to be
the case. But, what about when we are entered into by an experience, when we are
seized by an experience, so to speak, do we also have the feeling that it springs, so
to say, from the ego-center? Let us examine this by way of an example. Suppose we
look around our street outside the window again. Suddenly, some problem flashes
across our mind, and we begin thinking about it intently. Is it not as if the thought of
the problem emerged, as it were, from some darkness directly behind the I, the ego-
center, as if it seized us, pulled the ego out of the outer self, drew it into itself, so that
it now seems to be drawn back inwardly from its seeing, curled up in itself, in order
now to ponder the thought in itself ? Or when a profound inner joy emerges within
us, is it not as if something in us, under the I, as if in the heart, were radiating through
an inner space in the head in which the ego’s inner spirit rests, from which it engages
with that which is outside? As if the joy flows through the ego in this space, is drawn
into the I, and flows back out into the world through it? And similarly in every case: so
long as the ego lives in an experience the experience seems to spring from it, but if we
consider what is going on in us when the I < 38 > passes from one lived-experience to
another, we experience how the lived-experience emerges, as it were, from a definite
direction in the inner-spiritual background, in the psychical embedding of the ego,
and now the I is drawn into itself, until the I and its starting point melt together and
become ever more indistinguishable.33 We will therefore distinguish between these,
without confusing this distinction for a real, possibly spatial, separation. All of this
is psychical and is also found in spiritless animals. Let us now see how we might
proceed from here to reach the first germs of the spirit and finally the spirit itself.
In addition to the different kinds of lived-experiences, we may distinguish in
both the same lived-experience as well as in different lived-experiences degrees of
attention and concentration, with which the ego experiences itself as having a lived-
experience of something; they may be quite different in one and the same lived-
experience, but can also be the same in different lived-experiences. If I look out of
the window again, I may be at first quite indifferent, uninterested, and rather absent-
minded concerning all the people who pass by down below. Suddenly, I see someone
33 For this and what follows see the fundamental investigations of Alexander Pfänder in “Psychologie
der Gesinnungen (Erster Artikel),” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung,
Vol. I.1 (1913), p. 75ff., and II, p. 67ff., his Seele des Menschen. Versuch einer verstehenden
Psychologie (Halle 1933), and the investigations connected with this in my “Zur Ontologie der
sozialen Gemeinschaften,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. VI
(1923), p. 11ff., and especially p. 55ff.
who could be an acquaintance of mine, and now “I fasten my gaze upon him,” “direct
all my attention to him,” “concentrate myself” on him. Here it is as though the ego
is inwardly drawing itself together, drawing together its own forces (that is, not the
forces of the different lived-experiences flowing into from the background) from
every direction in which its attention had been diverted, as if intensifying its inner
gaze, with which it is directed at objects. This shifting of its attention is, therefore,
the greatest achievement of the I, which differs from the mere aiming at an object as
well as from its being filled with a lived-experience that flows through it. However,
any external object or event in the lived-body (such as toothache) < 39 > can purely by
itself draw the attention of the I, can as it were compel or pull it. But there are also cases
where the ego directs its attention at an object or withdraws its attention on its own,
by its own spontaneity, so to speak, with nothing necessarily changing in the object
or the stream of lived-experience (though this is also very often the case). However,
here we have the first, though still germinal, starting point of the spirit. For here we
have something like a free “action” of the ego. We thus stand, quite unexpectedly, at
one of the first boundary points between the psychical and the mental, one of the main
differences between man and animal. We have here, namely, the first beginnings of
self -determination, of a freedom of the I over-against its lived-experience. For the
ego can intensify its lived-experiences through concentration. In the case of several
simultaneous lived-experiences (for example, thinking about an object while at the
same time listening and seeing something else), it can strengthen the one by paying
attention to it, thereby weakening the other by withdrawing its attention and thus
its conscious power of experience until this lived-experience perishes from internal
weakness until it dies. Thus, we maintain that the intentional turning of attention is
the germ of freedom, the germ of the self-determination of the ego over-against its
lived-experiences and their contents, and is thus one starting point of the spirit.
One must be careful not to confuse or equate this freedom of the ego-center with
the emancipation and detachment of the intellect (or reason) from lived-experiences,
or even more so with the suppression of lived-experience by the intellect (or rea-
son), which has been so disastrous in our time. This phenomenon, however, is not
a necessary (albeit possible) consequence of the freedom of the I. < 40 > Rather, it
is an abuse, a fall from grace of the I, which is self-inflicted and unnecessary. For
this one-sided intellectualization of the entirety of psychical (and spiritual) life and
experience stems from the fact that the ego gives preference to the impulses of the
intellect, and above all allows them to take priority over all other impulses that flow
into it. Moreover, because the ego is one-sidedly anchored in them, as if internally
clinging to those lived-experiences that originate from the intellect (or reason), in the
end only the lived-experiences that are subjugated by the intellect (or reason) find
a right to access the ego and enter into it. But, this is by no means necessary. The
ego can just as well use its freedom in another direction (for example, by granting
access to its inner being, above all to the impulses of its basic essence or to Divine
inspirations to grasp their basic source). We will come back to this later on in detail.
But, it is not only through intensifying and strengthening, withdrawing and weak-
ening its attention that the I acts freely with respect to lived-experiences. It is capa-
ble of much more. There can be impulses that are kept from emerging in inner
130 R. K. B. Parker
lived-experience, either by supressing them (anger, for instance), repressing them, or

“killing” them through some other means of rational analysis. In the case of repres-
sion the impulse of lived-experience does not quite reach the conscious threshold
of the I. Here, the ego has placed an inner “gate keeper” on the path between the
source point of lived-experience and the I, so that the impulse before it can reach
the vicinity of the I is already pushed back to its source. In the case of suppression,
on the other hand, the impulse seems to have been already noticed by the I and
must now be pushed back by a conscious forcing on the part of the ego itself. This
is above all the case with analysis. Here the lived-experience flows < 41 > out from
its source and penetrates the I, but without properly flowing through the entire ego.
It is accompanied by disintegrating analyses and ethical devaluations that the ego
lives through simultaneously, and is gradually drowned in their stream. This is, of
course, the “healthiest” path if the annihilation of the lived-experience in question is
justified.
The freedom of the ego consists only in its ability to act with respect to those lived-
experiences that appear as impulses in it, but it seems to have no direct influence
on their emergence. But, this is not the case. In the case of outer perception and
all other lived-experiences that are dependent on the self-givenness of objects that
are independent of the I, the ego is not in a position to bring about the occurrence
of these lived-experiences directly by its own power (with the exception of external
actions, such as the locomotion of lived-bodies in space, through which this indirectly
occurs). Here it can only prepare itself for lived-experiences that may come, or their
possible refusal. (The I can listen into the distance, in case something calls out to
it, but it cannot itself produce the call; or it can close itself off inwardly from lived-
experiences, shutting its “inner” and outer eyes and ears.) At best it can as far as
possible look for its object. On the other hand, in the case of those lived-experiences
that flow out from an inner source, it can at least encourage their arrival. For example,
the I can keep an inner “feeler” held out in the direction of the inner psyche, from
which the impulses of its conscience (its basic essence) tend to flow, and it can as
often and as willingly obey these impulses, despite all inner inhibitions, as if there
was already a clear path from the I to their source point. Similarly, it can also aspire to
give rise to certain lived-experiences < 42 > , as, for example, by internally presenting
everything that usually attends to a certain lived-experience (such as joy). Finally,
if it had a lived-experience of a certain kind, it can remain, so to speak, in constant
contact with its source, so that this connection (for instance, with the “heart” from
which the impulse of love arises) becomes a permanent (habitual)34 attitude. Here the
ego is certainly not entirely free. It is dependent upon the lived-experiences that arise
in it, on the sources of these lived-experiences, the conditions of the body (a blind
person can never be given a lived-experience of seeing), the original givenness of
some partially independent object, a particularly strong lived-experience may “take
it by surprise” (quick to anger), its strength may fail, and so on. Nevertheless, in the
manner outlined above, it has the possibility to exercise a certain inner autonomy, and
34 See my “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und
phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. VI (1923), p. 38ff.
the power to execute this autonomy grows with increasing exercise.35 According to
contemporary psychology, all of this is absent in most animals, and they are therefore
merely psychical, and not spiritual, beings. (The most primitive beginnings of the
spontaneity of attention can be ascribed to them. Even if animals were to be granted
more than this, the essential distinction between spiritual and merely psychical being
would not be effaced. There would only be a shift in assigning some group of real
living beings to one domain or the other.)
A second essential point of distinction between spiritual and merely psychical
consciousness is self -consciousness. As we have discussed, all lived-experience
has the form “I experience something.” We have just now explored the meaning
of the “I experience something,” as well as the meaning of “I experience some-
thing.” < 43 > Now, what remains to be investigated is the meaning of “I experi-
ence something,” and here further essential points of distinction between psychical
and spiritual beings will be made clear. They consist in the possession of self -
consciousness, and in the possession of a basic spiritual essence, which enables
the spiritual being to have a lived-experience of spiritual objects, which the purely
psychical being in spite of its consciousness is absolutely incapable of doing.36
With the ability to withdraw voluntarily from or enter into its lived-experiences, as
we have seen, the ego has provided us with the first point of departure for mastering
and regarding its lived-experiences. For the ego bears within itself the ability to
direct itself toward something, to be conscious of something. This is not given to it
by the lived-experiences which enter into the I and through which it lives, but only by
the content, the object, to which “knowledge of” is directed.37 Similarly, the lived-
experiences lead the I to the stream, as it were, in which it is swimming (whether
thinking, loving, hating, valuing, willing, wishing, and so on). By the force of its
independence over-against the various lived-experiences in which it lives, and due to
the fact that the moment of consciousness of (the intentionality) pertains to itself, not
to individual lived-experiences, the ego is capable of directing itself upon itself in self-
consciousness (self-awareness, self-esteem, self-hatred, self-love, and so on). And
this again enables the I to affirm, suppress, strengthen, weaken, etc., its impulses. But,
taken in isolation the capacity for self-consciousness, the ability to have knowledge
of the lived-experiences of the ego, would not yet guarantee the freedom of the I. For
it is conceivable that in the lived-experience of reflecting on its lived-experiences
the ego appears to grasp its lived-experiences, but then is completely unfree and
at the mercy of their automatic stream.38 The moment of relative freedom of the
will < 44 > is therefore something other than that of self-consciousness. The latter,
35 See Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Sittlichkeit und ethische Werterkenntnis,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie
und phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. V (1922).

36 See A. Pfänder, Philosophie der Lebensziele (Göttingen 1948), p. 111ff.
37 In the first edition this sentence continues: “… the special ‘something’ by which consciousness
is the ‘consciousness of something’”.—Translator’s note.

38 This seems to be the case at times with hypnosis. See, for example, B.J. Björkhem, Die verborgene
Kraft (Olten 1954), p. 186.

132 R. K. B. Parker
however, requires the former: the higher, later, spiritual part of the two is perhaps the
moment of inner self-will.
We now come to the last essential distinction between psychical and spiritual
beings, which relies both on the object of experience and on the inner condition
of what can be experienced, and consists in the fact that the spiritual being has a
spiritual core, a spiritual basic essence, which, among other things, allows it to have
a lived-experience of realities outside of itself, something which purely psychical
and not yet spiritual beings are incapable of (be it animals or human beings at a
lower spiritual level, which, of course, has nothing to do in the least with intellectual
education or lack thereof). Even in Plato’s philosophy we find the basic idea that
like can only be recognized by like, or things of a similar nature (idem per idem);
that, for example, we ourselves have a body and it is only through having this body
that we can possibly grasp the physical world; it is only through our psyche that
we have access to psychical beings existing outside of us.39 The same is also true
of the spiritual: only insofar as we are spiritual beings can we grasp spiritual things
(be it other spiritual beings, their auras, or spiritual objects they have created). And,
the more we are spiritual, the higher our spirituality and the more and higher the
spirituality we are capable of receiving. Just as we might imagine some being who
can only perceive things in the physical world, such as a physical body having a
physical color and form, but not the full spectrum of the colors of white light or
colors irrespective of their attachment to a physical body, one might also imagine
that a spiritual being could grasp only the lower degrees of the spiritual and the
supernatural, while the higher spiritual beings would be beyond its grasp. As is the
case with certain mediums, < 45 > who though “blind” to the religious domain, cannot
help but recognize all kinds of ghosts: Du gleichst dem Geist, den du begreifst [you
are like the spirit you comprehend] (and vice versa, it is only the spirit that you
comprehend which is more or less like you). This applies at least to the lower levels;
since the higher levels clearly encompass the lower ones, one can presumably survey
and understand all lower levels of spirit from a higher level, but not vice versa.
Thus, if we attend to our lived-experiences, we notice how they flow from the
different inner spheres to the ego, and how the I directs its gaze to the objects and
contents corresponding to them, but that only certain kinds of lived-experiences
“connect” with certain kinds of objects, and enable the ego to perceive them. It is
only when we consciously exert our outer senses that we are able to have a lived-
experience of the external physical world and the worlds constructed upon it, only
when we are “inside” our lived-body that we can be conscious of its inner bodily
processes (see also Chap. 8), only when we enter into our inner psychic realm that
we are able to have a lived-experience of what is specifically psychical (for example,
memory, phantasy, etc.). And it is only when we enter into the spiritual realm of
39 Thisappears to be an allusion to the affinity argument in Plato’s Phaedo. “Gleiches durch Gle-
iches” is a view attributed to Empedocles and criticized by Aristotle in De Anima.—Translator’s
note.
our inner being, into our spiritual basic essence, that we are able to have a lived-
experience of the spiritual.40
Some have also spoken of a basic essence of animals, the entelechy of these living
beings. This has led them to understand, first, the original type of essence (real being)
that is realized in them, the “idea” (eidos) they instantiate: living being in general.
Second, they have grasped the real force in them (and its real basic source), which
causes these beings to be a specific type of living being. (The cause is already in the
plant, < 46 > such that from the acorn comes the oak, not a fir, from the grain of wheat
comes a stalk of wheat, not a beanstalk, and so on.) In this sense, we can speak of
the “metaphysical real essence” of a being.41 Finally, from here we can distinguish
the beings that are themselves fully developed by this force in accordance with the
idea. Here, therefore, we have in plants a purely physical (“vital”) basic essence, in
animals a psycho-physical basic essence, and in human beings a spiritual–psycho-
physical basic essence.42 Whether and to what extent these different kinds of basic
essences are only particular radiations, emanations, of one and the same eternal,
super-spiritual being—the Divine basic essence in the sense of Plotinus’ theory of
emanation—we cannot investigate here.
To the human person (that is, to a being that is also spiritually determined) belongs
not only an ego-center, which can escape and not blindly succumb to psychic drives,
but also an inner psycho-spiritual realm. This provides the ego with the firm ground
upon which it can judge and evaluate these inner drives, and shape itself in accordance
with higher values.43 But where must we begin, into which sphere of our inner being
must we delve to get hold of this basic spiritual essence?
40 On the difference between the spiritual and the psychical see M. Scheler “The Idols of Self Knowl-
edge” in Abhandlungen und Aufsätze, Vol. II (Leipzig 1915), and H. Conrad-Martius, Metaphysische
Gespräche (Halle 1921).
41 See my “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und
phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. VI (1923), p. 7ff., as well as “Entelecheia” in H. Conrad-

Martius, Der Selbstaufbau der Natur, 2nd edn. (Munich 1961).
42 See A. Pfänder, Philosophie der Lebensziele (Göttingen 1948), p. 28ff.
43 See, for instance, Edith Stein, Endliches und ewiges Sein, p. 336ff. (Freiburg 1950); H. Conrad-
Martius, Metaphysische Gespräche (Halle 1921); and A. Pfänder, Philosophie der Lebensziele
(Göttingen 1948).
The Sense of Mystical Experience
According to Gerda Walther
Angela Ales Bello
Abstract Interest in mysticism is present in the writings of the Phenomenological

School of Philosophy, which was founded by Edmund Husserl. Edith Stein and Gerda
Walther, for example, are phenomenologists who investigate mysticism. The former
is better known for this kind of investigation, but it should be remarked that the only
book dedicated to the topic was written by the latter. Walther connects mysticism with
telepathy, but she also distinguishes the objects of the two experiences. In mysticism
Walther claims that the object of investigation is the exceptional and direct encounter
with God. To describe this encounter, Walther, like Stein, examines the human being,
ultimately comparing it to a lamp. Through this image, Walther allows us to grasp
what it is like to experience the live presence of God that invades our being. This
type of mystical experience can be found in all religions, thereby demonstrating that
it is a real possibility given by God to human beings.
Keywords Phenomenological method · Hyletics · Noetics · Telepathy

Mystical experience
The theme of mysticism is found throughout the philosophical explorations of phe-

nomenology. This is due to the fact that phenomenologists, especially the early
women phenomenologists, devoted much attention to the phenomenon of religion.
Furthermore, interest in the structure of human beings also led to an exploration of
religion because of the spiritual constitution of the human person. Gerda Walther
can be rightfully viewed as the phenomenologist who carried out the most sustained
and focused research on the phenomenon of mysticism. Edith Stein, though deeply
interested in the question of mysticism, certainly explored it, but largely through
the specific writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Walther focused on
the topic itself, making illustrative references to mystics from a variety of religions.
To grasp Walther’s unique position I will analyze her Phänomenologie der Mystik
A. Ales Bello (B)

Pontifical Lateran University, Rome, Italy
e-mail: alesbello@tiscali.it

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_10
136 A. Ales Bello
[The Phenomenology of Mysticism].1 I argue that, for Walther, mystical experience

presupposes an accurate understanding of the structure of the human person, which
includes both hyletic and noetic dimensions.
Moreover, it should be noted here that, following Husserl, phenomenologists,
from Stein to Heidegger, from Conrad-Martius to Max Scheler and the Munich phe-
nomenologist Alexander Pfänder (who did not directly belong to the Göttingen and
Freiburg Circles), who were often cited by Walther and Stein in their own studies, car-
ried out philosophical anthropological studies to grasp the genesis of all expressions
of a human being, a point with which I have great sympathy. These phenomenolo-
gists taught us that we cannot understand human attitudes, cultural works, and actions
without grasping the essence of the human being.
The type of investigation Walther carries out is admittedly circular: what we
encounter are human expressions and productions, and if we seek to understand
their meaning and origin we inadvertently have to ask about their authors. Certainly,
this is not the first time in philosophy that we encounter such circular thinking. The
novelty of Husserl’s phenomenology consists of a deep archeological excavation,
which not only draws from psychology, especially Brentano’s,2 but which also is
deeply philosophical and specifically gnoseological and anthropological. It inspires
the members of the phenomenological school to investigate and rationally explain
the deep, complex folds of a human being. As Husserl, citing Heraclitus, reminds
us: “Whatever path you choose to follow, you will never find the limits of the soul,
for its depths are most great.”3
The presence of women in Husserl’s school could be justified by observing that
he was certainly open to their participation in the group and that phenomenology
proposes a type of analysis that is very congenial to a “woman’s” thinking. An
immediate objection to this line of reasoning lies in the claim that philosophical
research is not conditioned by gender differences. For many years, however, and not
only at the personal level4 but also in conjunction with other women philosophers5 ,
I have sought to demonstrate the particularity of philosophical research carried out
by women.
Edith Stein was the first philosopher to take up at length the difference between
male and female, though she did not extend her treatment to a discussion of how
the two genders contributed to philosophy itself. I draw upon Stein’s analysis to
extend her treatment in the direction mentioned above. Her position on this theme
is particularly important because she never opposed male rationality to female feel-
1 Gerda Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik (Olten: Walter Verlag, 1955).

2I treat the connection of phenomenology to psychology in my book: Angela Ales Bello, Il senso
dell’umano: Fenomenologia, Psicologia, Psicopatologia (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2016).
3 Heraclitus Fragment, as cited by Husserl in his Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology, trans. by David Carr (Evanston, IL; Northwestern University Press), Sect. 49.
4 Angela Ales Bello, Fenomenologia dell’essere umano: Lineamenti di una filosofia al femminile
[The Phenomenology of the Human Person: An Outline for a Philosophy by Woman] (Rome: Città
Nuova, 1992).
5 See the work of the group of Italian feminist philosophers at the University of Verona called
Diotima as well as the work of University of Rome philosopher Francesca Brezzi.

The Sense of Mystical Experience According to Gerda Walther 137
ings, as many have done, including certain feminist thinkers; rather, she shows that
women, and not only men, have theoretical capacities and interests that she defines as
“metaphysical” and as possessing their own unique characteristics. She, along with
Hedwig Conrad-Martius and Gerda Walther, are concrete examples of people who
possess exquisite, profound capacities for theoretical work.
The descriptor “exquisite” came to mind spontaneously, and I believe that it
demonstrates the particular quality of women phenomenologists’ theoretical capaci-
ties. These capacities are accompanied by a sensibility that is not opposed to intellec-
tual research; rather, they permit Gerda Walther to investigate aspects of reality that
often escape standard research practices and methods. Stein claims that each indi-
vidual human being possesses both male and female characteristics.6 One should not
see male and female as opposites; rather, they are tendencies found in both genders
that appear in various forms.
As discussed above, a reading of the early women phenomenologists as well as
female philosophers, in general, allows us to see these particular forms in relation to
certain themes already investigated or questions to be raised. All of this is most clear
in Gerda Walther’s work. Let us recall that general tendencies that can be individuated
in a “universal” way are articulated in each human being in a non-repeatable way,
and this must be the object of philosophical reflection.7
I have written about the three phenomenologists together; however, they are three
distinct personalities. Hedwig Conrad-Martius is more rational–scientific and Edith
Stein is more rational, theoretical, and metaphysical. Gerda Walther is a rational type
of person, though she investigates what is beyond the rational (namely, the paranormal
and the occult). These different personalities show how universality articulates itself
in singular, human forms.
Walther’s concern with what lies beyond the purely rational can be found in her
work, Phenomenology of Mysticism, first published in 1923 and in a subsequent
edition in 1955. She states that the work is the fruit of her research into the nature
of the Divine and, in particular, mystical experience. Her analysis of the Divine is
like Edith Stein’s, who precedes her investigation of mysticism with a reflection on
religious experience, as lived by homo religiosus (the religious human being), who
is not always mystical. Stein, following Teresa of Avila, distinguishes the experience
of faith from mystical experience.
Walther also draws inspiration from Saint Teresa of Avila, but she is struck by
the particular nature of the deep contact with the Divine, understood as mystical
experience. An atheist, she describes opening herself up spontaneously to the Divine
though a reading of the works of Saint Teresa of Avila, books about Saint Teresa,
and the writings of other mystics. To understand Saint Teresa, Walther focuses her
inquiry on the paranormal and the supra-rational.
6I have often returned to this argument and I have synthesized these tendencies in my latest book:
Angela Ales Bello, Tutto colpa di Eva. Antropologia e religione dal femminismo alla gender the-
ory [It’s All Eve’s Fault: Anthropology and Feminism from Feminism to Gender Theory] (Roma:
Castelvecchi, 2017).
7 I treat this theme in one of my first books, Fenomenologia dell’essere umano. Lineamenti di una
filosofia al femminile (Rome: Città Nuova, 1992).

138 A. Ales Bello
Walther’s turn to the mystical must not be read as esoteric or light. On the contrary,
she presents a rigorous phenomenological description in Husserlian style. Husserl
wrote a letter to Walther, which could be read as a book review of sorts and which
is preserved in the Husserl Archives at the University of Louvain. He does not
criticize the manner in which his former student proceeded to describe paranormal
phenomena; rather, he expresses, as Walther records in her Introduction to the text, his
doubts about the object of mystical experience (that is, God). He raises his doubts
not because he does not believe in God, but because he did not think that what
the mystics described could serve as a valid foundation for attaining God. In other
words, according to Husserl, mystics are guilty of a kind of a personal exaltation, an
“ardent love,” that pushed them to affirm mystical union. Again, Husserl does not
reveal himself as a skeptic in his letter; rather, in my opinion, he shows himself as a
possibilist, because he affirms that there exist depths in the human being that are not
accessible, depths in which the Divine reveals itself. The descriptions of depth by
mystics, however, are only “ideal possibilities.” On one hand, the letter reveals that
mystical experience possesses a certain typicality, a habitus that is identical in sense,
understood as a structural sense, in all human beings. Every subject has his or her
own particular world, with its own depths. On the other hand, Husserl hypothesizes
the fullness of possible experiences that open new ways and perspectives, thereby
establishing a double movement of descent into the “profound depths” and ascent
out of the greatest depths; “… which moves in the profound depths and which
comes from the greatest depths.”8 We know that what is “possible” for Husserl
is also “realizable,”9 even though in fact it may not be realized. Hence, Husserl’s
observations contained in his long 7-page letter have led me to postulate that perhaps
he could have viewed mysticism as a way to God, not because the object is reached
by moving outside of oneself, but because one can always enter more deeply into
oneself, so deeply that one may reach the point where God dwells.10
Let us now focus our attention on Walther’s text. Prior to discussing mysticism
proper, she analyzes other experiences (for example, telepathy). To be able to inves-
tigate such experiences, one requires an understanding of the complex structure of
human beings. To do this she deploys her “venerated teacher” Husserl’s method.
Although Walther examines her own personal experiences, she is able to extract
important elements from them. Walther is different from Husserl in that she starts
from very specific experiences that are clarified through Husserl’s method. By using
his method, Walther identifies closely with her teacher, but Husserl, rather than start-
ing with specific experiences, looks to the human being and all that happens to him/her
at the everyday level: perceptions, memories, imaginings, reflections, empathy, and
8 Edmund Husserl, “Entwurf eines Briefes als Antwort gedacht an Frl. Walther” [“Thought Sketch
for a Response Letter to Miss Walther”] (Ms. trans. A.V.21, p. 7.).
9 See Angela Ales Bello, The Sense of Things: Toward a Phenomenological Realism, trans. by
Antonio Calcagno (Analecta Husserliana No. 118) (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015), Sect. 5.2.1.
10 Angela Ales Bello, The Divine in Husserl and Other Explorations, trans. by Antonio Calcagno
(Analecta Husserliana No. 98) (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009).

many other kinds of lived experiences [Erlebnisse], which Walther will draw upon
to analyze both telepathy and mysticism, as we shall see.
Neither Husserl nor Stein nor Conrad-Martius were attracted to the study of the
paranormal and the occult, but they all maintained that no phenomena were to be
excluded from phenomenological study. Hedwig Conrad-Martius pushed for a sec-
ond edition (1955) of Walther’s work on mysticism, and one finds in it numerous
references to Saint Teresa’s Interior Castle and Edith Stein’s Science of the Cross.
In my view, this indicates a profound intellectual collaboration between the women
phenomenologists.
Research Method
In addressing the question about the characteristics and cognitive validity of the
mystical lived-experience, Walther carefully uses the phenomenological method, as
previously mentioned. The first step of the method is to deploy the epoché to suspend
prejudices about our natural beliefs about phenomena. Husserl maintained that the
epoché was essential for all phenomenological and philosophical investigation. In
Walther’s Introduction one finds the specific object of her inquiry delineated as well
as two prejudices that must be bracketed. First, God cannot give Himself to human
beings as He is standing before us in “flesh and blood.” If one experiences God,
then it must be considered an illusion of psyche. This prejudice stems, according to
Walther, from the rampant and dominant psychologism found in German culture in
the early part of the 20th century. The second prejudice extends from the legacy of
British empiricism that maintains that all knowledge must pass through the senses;
the senses are the only acceptable instruments of cognition.11
Concerning this second prejudice, Walther affirms that both telepathic and mys-
tical knowing are not based in the senses, even though mystics will often describe
physical sensations connected with the body. Many mystics, however, will lodge
these sensory descriptions in metaphorical language. Moreover, although they use
the language of sensation, mystics will also note a great difference between what is
experienced or sensed in the body and what is being lived spiritually in the presence
of the Divine. For example, Angela of Foligno felt the passion of Christ in all of her
limbs, and she received the stigmata as a sign of Christ’s presence. Certainly, her
sensations were not received though physical contact with the Divine. In this sense
Walther’s claim about the second prejudice may be viewed as correct. I view these
sensations as belonging to the “hyletic” aspect of knowledge. Let us briefly consider
the hyletic sphere to show how it is present and active in mystical experience, which
human beings live from within and not from without.

140 A. Ales Bello
The Role of Hyletics and Noetics in Mysticism
The meanings of Husserl’s terms “hyletic” and “noetic” can be clarified by tracing
the flow of our lived-experiences. Consciousness shows us that all lived-experiences
are dual in nature insofar as they consist of a noetic, intentional moment and a
hyletic, material one. Hyle and noesis are Greek words that denote “matter” and
“thought.” However, they are used by phenomenologists in different ways than their
Greek etymology would convey. They indicate two kinds of cognitive processes. The
hyletic refers to a “material sensory” process, whereas the noetic refers to the fact
that our cognition is intentional and always seeks a sense or meaning. The description
of this doubleness can be seen in the analysis of our bodies that we feel as living
[Leib]. This lived-body not only has localized in it the sensations delivered by our
senses, which play a constitutive role in the constitution of objects in space, but also
other kinds of sensations, which are often called sensual feelings (for example, the
sensations of pleasure, pain, the well-being of the body as well as the discomfort of
the body caused by some bodily condition or sickness).12 This last point is important
for understanding religious and mystical experience.
Edith Stein’s example of a block of granite is particularly illustrative here. When
we seek to know what the block of granite is like we know that we are dealing here
with a formation of matter that has sense or meaning. Its form is full of sense because
it is constituted according to a structural principle in which its weight, consistency,
and hardness all participate. We can even say that part of knowing what granite is
involves us grasping that it presents itself in “enormous blocks” and not in small
grains or pieces.13 What is important for us is that we are “affected at the level of the
senses” by the granite, for as we touch and see it “it draws our attention in a unique
way.” In fact, its seemingly immovable consistency and its massiveness are not only
things that fall under our senses and that reason may observe as real, but the senses
and reason are also struck from within. The senses and reason reveal something to
us, and we can grasp something about what the senses and reason present.14
The hyletic, then, is particularly connected to both the bodily and psychic dimen-
sions of human beings. It is the sphere of sensibility revealed by Husserl in his analysis
of passive synthesis, which looks at layers of perception as well as lived-experiences
of psyche.15 For example, a particular color may elicit a sense of well-being or feel-
ing unwell, which may be seized consciously by “living through” such experiences.
However, intentional functions, which are noetic, are connected with the aforemen-
tioned layers of sensations. This means that the material content of experience takes
12 See Sect. 39 of Edmund Husserl’s Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomeno-
logical Philosophy, Vol. 2, trans. by R. Rojcewicz (Dordrecht: Springer, 1990).

13 Edith Stein, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person. Vorlesungen zur philosophischen Anthropolo-
gie, newly ed. by B. Beckmann-Zöller (Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe Vol. 14) (Freiburg: Herder,
2004), 116.
15 Angela Ales Bello, Hyle, Body, Life: Phenomenological Archaeology of the Sacred (Analecta
Husserliana No. 57) (Dordrecht: Springer, 1998), 63–74.

on a spiritual function. This is also the case for sense experience, which forms part of
perceptions upon which perceptual judgments are based (for example, the judgment
“This is a book”).16 Here we are dealing with another aspect of human beings, who
not only physically feel but also react psychically, value, judge, and decide. Certainly,
this aspect is specifically human because it is a unifying aspect. The human being
must be considered in all its complexity, in a hierarchy of functions that move from
the sensible-sensory sphere to the intellectual-voluntary sphere, from the hyletic to
the noetic.
Both spheres are present in mystical experience. Edith Stein characterizes mystical
experience as the manifestation of the Divine, understood as presence; we can also
grasp something of the Divine in mystical experience. The whole of the human
person is involved in a mystical experience, even though the sphere of the sensible
may be privileged. In mystical experience one finds a sensible presence or even the
deprivation of sense experience because all the senses are involved, although they
may not all act autonomously. Whereas “faith concerns the intellect,” “contemplation
is an affair of the heart or the intimacy of the soul and, therefore, involves all of the
faculties.”17 The presence of God is accompanied by interior sensations of happiness
or intense nostalgia. Here the intellect and the will “stand and watch.” They are
not activated even though they may be seized by mystical experience. The Divine
presence grips and burns with love, penetrating, following the description of Teresa
of Avila, the “interior castle,” which is like the heart of the Andalusian palm, the
intimate center where the soul is truly at home.
Examining the texts of John of the Cross, whose poetic force successfully
expresses a whole range of interior reactions, Edith Stein insists that diverse lev-
els of the human being participate in such reactions. In particular, she traces in John
of the Cross’s The Living Flame of Love a series of “sensations” of the soul: “The
activity of the Holy Spirit in the soul produces an inflamed love in which the will
of the soul becomes one single love in union with the Divine flame.”18 The flame
touches and injures, and in the deepest center of the soul it carries out a substantial
and most pleasing action, which consists of a manifestation of the beatific vision.
“The soul can only act itself with the help of the corporeal senses, and in this state it
is totally free and far removed from them,” and so “it limits itself to one thing which
is receiving from God. He alone can move the soul and complete his work in the
depths of its being… without the mediation of the senses.” So, all movements of the
soul become Divine, are acts of God, yet also acts of the soul. “For God works them
in it and with it, insofar as it gives its consent and agreement.”19
One thinks here of Bernini’s statue of Saint Teresa in Ecstasy and how he succeeds
in expressing the saint’s rapture in being seized by God, which involved her whole
person and in which all of the senses participated, even in their passivity. This union of
16 Angela Ales Bello, Hyle, Body, Life: Phenomenological Archaeology of the Sacred, 63–74.
17 Angela Ales Bello, Hyle, Body, Life: Phenomenological Archaeology of the Sacred, 206.
18 Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross, trans. by Josephine Koeppel, OCD (The Collected Works
of Edith Stein No. 6) (Washington, DC: ICS Publications), 187.

19 Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross, 188.
142 A. Ales Bello
the saint with God reveals something about the nature of God: one grasps in Teresa’s
hand that God is both one and three. Edith Stein suggests that the mystery of the
Trinity is revealed not through rational reflection (which will never be successful),
but through direct contact. It is through being burned that the hand and the caress of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are revealed. We are not dealing here with metaphors
and symbols, for these are real presences and actions. “All three Divine persons take
up their dwelling in the soul.”20 This dwelling of the Trinity produces extraordinary
delight. The experience, as recounted by mystics, prevalently remains in the soul,
but in certain cases, Stein says, “the internal wound also manifests externally in the
body. John of the Cross recalls here the stigmata of Saint Francis.”21 As we shall
see, Gerda Walther, in describing mystical experience, speaks of the rigidity of the
body that accompanies mystical experience, though she does not explicitly mention
the hyletic dimension.
The Structure of the Human Being According to Gerda

Walther
The analysis of the hyletic and noetic dimensions helps us to understand the structure
of the human being. Gerda Walther claims that body, psyche, and spirit are the three
components that form the human individual, and she dedicates a significant portion
of her work on mysticism to an essential description of them.22 The three aspects
are real and coordinated by the I-center, which Walther describes in a personal and
original manner, although she follows in large part Husserl’s analysis of the pure I. All
lived-experiences ultimately refer to the I-point or I-center. It has the autonomous
capacity to self-determine and to act freely through the power of spirit and the
lived-experiences of spirit. The I is the most noble part of the human being. The
conscious I is distinguished from the subconscious, which must not be understood
as the unconscious of Freud, for Walther’s subconscious is the source of determined
lived-experiences.23
Walther describes the subconscious as Einbettung or embedment. The root sense
of the word (namely, bed) denotes a place that contains or encloses something. It is
the deepest aspect of the human being though unconscious. We can understand the
subconscious with the metaphor of an ancient oil lamp. The combustible liquid is the
deepest part of the lamp and may be viewed as the subconscious. One also finds in
the lamp the layers of the psyche and spirit. The I-center is the wick. The container
of the lamp is the body. We are conscious of the lived-experiences that emerge from
20 EdithStein, The Science of the Cross, 195.

21 EdithStein, The Science of the Cross, 197.
22 Gerda Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik, Chaps. 8–10.
23 Gerda Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik, Chap. 2.
this lamp, and all lived-experiences are ego-centered24 (that is, they always refer to
the I).
The I-center must not be confused with the fundamental essence of the human
being, in which lie human autonomy and self-consciousness. Here, one could view
Walther’s I-center as being similar to Stein’s notion of “core” or the “soul of the
soul.” Stein says the core is where the singularity of the human resides and where the
Divine manifests itself. For Walther the fundamental essence of the human is placed
behind or, more precisely, beyond the aforementioned embedment.25
Characteristics of Mystical Experience According to Walther
To arrive at the essence of mystical experience Walther begins by making a series of

general claims, which can be read as a series of concentric circles. One moves through
the various circles to arrive at the specific object constitutive of mystical experience.
Two circles are of primary importance (namely, telepathy26 and the particular form
of emptying of the I).27 Walther’s analysis of telepathy draws upon her own and
others’ experiences of it. Her phenomenological descriptions display both critical
distance and acute objective analysis.
In telepathy the origin of lived-experiences becomes important. As ego-centered
beings we are conscious that the source of our lived-experiences is in ourselves
and that some of those experiences may be deployed to understand what lies inside
and outside us. Walther describes the lived-experience of telepathy as having within
oneself the very same lived-experiences of another person without us causing such
experiences to happen. We note here that the mystical lived-experience is related to
the “other person.” Whereas in telepathy the other person is human, the other person
in mystical experience is Divine.
Empathy allows one to grasp the lived-experiences of another while knowing that
the source of these lived-experiences lies in the other. Husserl and Stein describe
empathic experiences as non-originary or non-primordial. Ego and alter ego never
identify with one another in empathy. We grasp the sense of the other’s lived-
experiences and we can share what is universal about them. For example, the joy
I experience also contains within itself the essence of joy in general, which I can
recognize as being present in the joy of the other. In telepathy, by contrast, Walther
asserts that one lives fully the experience of the other, as lived by the other. Walther
gives the example of living the experience of a friend. The source of the experience
24 For a more detailed description of the oil lamp metaphor see my Fenomenologia dell’essere
umano. Lineamenti di una filosofia al femminile as well as my book with Marina Pia Pellegrino,
Edith Stein–Gerda Walther, Incontri possibili. Empatia, Telepatia, Comunità, Mistica, ed. by Angela
Ales Bello and Marina Pia Pellegrino (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2014). See also Marina Pia Pellegrino’s
chapter in this book (Chap. 3).
144 A. Ales Bello
does not lie with the I, but in the other. Such experiences are not usual, nor do they
fall outside the norm, and hence may be considered paranormal.
As we shall see, telepathic experiences prefigure mystical ones. For telepathic
experiences to occur the I must find itself, says Gerda Walther, as an “isolated I,”
an I that has lost all of its ties with the outside world and its fundamental essence.
Here the ego can be considered completely “free.” She speaks of the foregoing state
not as a possible experience, but as an actual experience that she underwent in 1918
when visiting her gravely ill father.28 On her return visit home, she described herself
as losing touch with her body, the embedment of her being, and with her own lived-
experiences. She described herself as being isolated in an “abyss,” which completely
surrounded her.29 She admits that such a situation was difficult to bear. When such
abysmal states afflict human beings, they feel they need to seek something other,
greater, and more stable (namely, the Divine).
Here two possibilities present themselves. First, one can turn inward and be in
touch with oneself and others while linking oneself to human things and persons.
Second, one can remain on the path of solitude and seek a definitive Something,30
which one may not know fully but for which one may be nostalgic, as mystics do.
But, in the case of the latter possibility, if one has nostalgia for this Something, does
not one know that this being exists, and how does one access such a being? The only
possibility, then, is that this Something is already present in our deepest being, in the
seventh room, to borrow a metaphor of Saint Teresa of Avila.
Walther believes, however, that this Something must be external: the I calls it and
waits for it. It does not live in the human being. The difference between Something
that resides internally as opposed to dwelling externally is the precise difference
between Edith Stein’s position and Walther’s view on the relation between the human
and the Divine. Walther’s position is justifiable, given that she does not wish to reduce
the Divine to a human possession. Having “nostalgia” for Something Divine cannot
be explained unless the I already had known that the Divine already existed, because
it is present in us. Here we are dealing with a dynamic of presence–absence insofar
as the Divine leaves a trace in us, which was not produced by us, otherwise we would
not seek it. But, this trace does not capture the whole of the greatness of the Divine
being. The Divine is greater than us and it transcends us. If it wishes to be known it
must manifest itself.
The descriptors of the Divine trace or spark, to follow Meister’s Eckhart’s descrip-
tion, are not accepted by Walther because she holds that the relation between the
essence of the human being and that of the Divine are incommensurable. For Walther,
one must move beyond oneself to find God, and God can only be found if God chooses
to manifest himself. Here, we are speaking about grace. She excludes religion as an
originary, “natural” fact, ultimately affirming religion as something given by God
and as being purely spiritual.31 Walther is speaking here of Divine revelation, albeit
28 Gerda Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik, 139.

she never explicitly uses such terms. Further proof for her position on the primacy of
Divine revelation can be found in her discussion of the two modes of relation: Either
God manifests Himself directly to the human being or does so through a mediator to
whom He has already shown Himself.
The case of the mediator presents two more possibilities for consideration: Either
the mediator is Divine (that is, it is God Himself as is the case with the Incarnate
Christ), or it is other human beings who refract the Divine light and speak of God.
Human mediators (for example, the reformers of historical religions) always bring a
limited message because it belongs to certain people. Walther’s insight here is very
interesting because it justifies the possibility of a plurality of religions in that many
religions refract the Divine against a plurality of human beings, all of whom possess
their own unique characteristics. Every expression of religion, then, captures aspects
of the Divine, although such aspects never fully capture the Divine. Often, these
Divine qualities are mixed with human ones. One can speak of a universal religion
only if the mediator is God, which is the case for the incarnate Christ.
For Walther, religion is always linked to an ab extra revelation of the Divine; reli-
gion does not come from the presence of the Divine in us. Stein, however, reminds us
that revelation can be both public and private. The former is given to the founders of
various historical religions and it passes through various human filters. The message
is directed to both individuals and the collectivity, as is the case in diverse religions.
Hence, religion may be viewed as both a subjective and inter-subjective phenomenon.
The latter consists of a direct revelation, which does not require a mediator. Com-
munion with God is established, which is often referred to as a “mystical union.”
Communion can only happen between persons, and this is why, for Stein, commu-
nion is possible between human and Divine persons. The desire to bathe in the rays
of Divine light and love, however, is not communion. In this sense, then, the Nirvana
of Buddhism is not sufficient. One may also enjoy the desire to bathe in the light of
nature, for example.
Let us pause to consider the qualities of mystical union, which Walther considers
in her work by distinguishing communion with God from mystical union. She asks
whether or not we can do something to achieve such union. Certainly, one cannot
bring about a mystical experience by himself or herself. I am in agreement with
Walther and Stein on this point. However, one can become inwardly disposed to be
in contact with the Divine, one can desire and ask for the Divine presence. There is
no guarantee that the presence will manifest itself. Saint Teresa of Avila used to tell
her fellow sisters that entry into Carmel never guaranteed mystical union.
Responding to “rationalistic” skeptics32 of mystical experience, Walther notes
that often mystics will lapse into contradictions. On one hand, mystics may describe
themselves as having entered into “nothingness,” including the nothingness of the
self. On the other hand, they recount what they have seen, as is the case in all histor-
ical religions. It is through such testimony that we know about mystical experience.
Walther justifies the validity of such contradictions. First, the rigidity of the body,
as mentioned earlier, may be viewed as stemming from the extraordinary concen-

146 A. Ales Bello
tration on what is being lived or experienced in the moment. Second, entering into
and describing nothingness is attributable to the I-center that feels itself isolated and
immersed in a surrounding abyss, an experience that Gerda Walther herself experi-
enced. Although Walther does not explicitly speak of herself as undergoing a mystical
experience, albeit one may consider what she describes happening to her I-center as
pre-mystical, she does understand that one can abandon oneself to the sea of lights
without losing one’s self, understood as a cognitive subject. Walther’s insight can be
confirmed by comments made in Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle and Edith Stein’s
Finite and Eternal Being.33
The subject (I) and the object (God) are never absolutely unified, even though
a relation of unity is established between them: the creature can never identify or
become God. Some mystics, however, view their experiences as being privileged
and, therefore, they view themselves as being deserving of special honors, which
ultimately should be directed to God who dwells in them. Such mystics do not suffer
from excessive pride or self-entitlement; rather, they feel themselves humble before
the greatness of God. They view themselves simply as the bearers of such greatness.34
In every religion—be it Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam—swami
monks, bhikkhus, priests, and Sufis speak of themselves in the third person. They also
take on a new name because they feel themselves “reborn,” as they themselves have
been completely decentered by God. Walther ends her Phenomenology of Mysticism
with the foregoing claim, and this is important, for even in the 1920s and 1950s she
anticipates more contemporary forms of interreligious dialogue and one of its more
important themes: Dialogue between religions is necessary, and mystical experience
provides a fertile ground for it. God directly manifests Himself to religious human
beings without human “mediators,” and this demonstrates His uniqueness. Beyond
what religious doctrines are able to affirm, mystical experience shows that God is a
Divine person. For example, in Sufism, Allah is considered to be so unreachable that
He is unable to be defined. Hence, he can only be understood as a Divine “person”.
Though God can never be fully known Sufi mystics employ the pronoun You in refer-
ence to God, testifying to the fact that God is experienced as a person in their internal
dialogues, when God responds to their invocations, and when he dwells in them.
Undoubtedly, Sufis have suffered much persecution on account of such claims: other
forms of Islam do not believe that such privileged encounters with God are possible.
The Trinity and Mysticism
Despite her openness to mystical experiences in other religions, Walther privileges

Christianity in her analysis of the phenomenon of mysticism. She dedicates the last
chapter of her book to the Trinity, which she views as personifying an important
33 Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, trans. by Kurt Reinhardt (Washington, DC: ICS Publica-
tions, 2002).
relationship between humans and the Divine. The “matter” out of which God is
constituted is compared to a resplendent sun; she imagines this matter as divided
into three parts bound together by a band of light. She invokes the image of a triple
sun with each part having its own unique rays, although all parts belong to one and
the same matter.
The relationship between the human being and the Triune God is different vis-à-
vis mystical union. We can imagine the mystic as a small candle that is lit by one
of the rays of the suns. Hence, it receives light, but it is not the source of light. The
matter, the substance of the light, gathers together as one of the three suns. The Divine
matter is never confused with the human one, which is created. This difference is
most clear in the Christian Profession of Faith, in which Christ is not “created,” but
generated. The difference refers to the way Christ proceeds from the Father and the
Son. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in a dynamic relationship, which implies no
creation of one by the other. Concerning the Holy Spirit, Walther posits that the love
between the Father and the Son, a love that is endowed with an I-center, constitutes
one of the principal aspects of the Holy Spirit.
In the human being who unites with God, however, there remains only the wick,
the I-center immersed in a sea of light that does not liquefy like the candle (the body);
rather, it remains the same in its singularity. This conservation of one’s singularity
allows one to recount what happens in the course of mystical experience. Walther
does not appeal to philosophy and/or theology to explain her idea about the Trinity.
She deploys images and metaphors to make her point understandable.35
It is important that Gerda Walther’s thoughts receive more attention. She widens
the horizon of our understanding of mystical experience by making reference to
mystics in other religions. Moreover, she is not afraid to draw upon her own personal
experiences to explain key aspects of her phenomenology of mysticism. Her analysis
in the end remains concretely objective, and she succeeds in giving an account of
mystical experience that is both rigorous and deeply enlivening.
Angela Ales Bello is Professor Emeritus of the History of Contemporary Philosophy at the Lat-
eran University. Former Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, she is now visiting professor at the
Universities of Saint Paul and Campinas, Brazil. She is the President of the Italian Center of Phe-
nomenological Research in Rome. She is also the President of the International Society of the
Phenomenology of Religion and the Italian Edith Stein Association. At the Lateran University,
she is the Director of the International Research Area Dedicated to Edith Stein and Contemporary
Philosophy. Her recent publications include: The Divine in Husserl and Other Explorations, trans.
by Antonio Calcagno, 2010; The Sense of Things: Toward a Phenomenological Realism, trans. by
Antonio Calcagno, 2015; Il senso del sacro. Dall’arcaicità alla desacralizzazione, 2014; Il senso
dell’umano. Fenomenologia Psicologia, Psicopatologia, 2016; Tutta colpa di Eva. Antropologia
e religione dal femminismo alla gender theory, 2017.

Phenomenological Approaches
to the Uncanny and the Divine: Adolf
Reinach and Gerda Walther on Mystical
Experience
Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray
Abstract Adolf Reinach (1883–1917) and Gerda Walther (1897–1977) were two
figures of the early movement who gave phenomenological description to mystical
and uncanny experiences; and, while the phenomenological approach each employs
is slightly different, both commit to phenomenological description of the experiences
of God and the uncanny, including the foreseeing of one’s death, in a manner that
is open-minded and unprejudiced. In this chapter I will discuss the experiences
of foreseeing and of God for both Reinach and Walther. I will rely on their first-
hand accounts of such experiences, utilizing the battlefield notes of Reinach from
WWI found in his Sämtliche Werke and the mystical experience Walther describes
having in 1918 in her book Zum Anderen Ufer. In the end it will become clear that
phenomenology is an approach for all kinds of experiences, even those that are most
unconventional, and thus the potential for further and fresh research is great.
Keywords Adolf reinach · Gerda walther · Phenomenology · Mysticism

The uncanny
While phenomenology is said to be a discipline that studies the structures of experi-

ence and/or consciousness, the types of experiences it often chooses to explore are
of the everyday person: speech acts like promises or judgments. Willing, valuing,
empathy, fantasy, and feelings like love or anxiety or disgust have all been discussed
at great length. But, what of mystical or uncanny experiences? Are they not also
worthy of description and exploration for the phenomenologist even though they are
not everyday experiences or happen to everyone?
Adolf Reinach (1883–1917) and Gerda Walther (1897–1977) were two figures of
the early movement who described mystical and uncanny experiences phenomeno-
logically, and while the phenomenological approach each employs is slightly differ-
ent, they both seek to avoid two things: first, this kind of phenomenological study
cannot provide a causal explanation of mystical events, nor can or should it reduce
K. Baltzer-Jaray (B)
King’s University College (UWO), London, Ontario, Canada
e-mail: kbaltzer@uwo.ca

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_11
150 K. Baltzer-Jaray
them to something accepted by the principles of science or the laws of psychology;

second, the purpose of such an endeavor is not to prove or disprove the experience,
it is not an argument about validity or truth, but rather such a study must simply
describe the experience so as to apprehend its essence. Reinach and Walther commit
to describing the experiences of God and the uncanny phenomenologically, including
foreseeing one’s own death, in a manner that is open-minded and unprejudiced, and
they both do so while utilizing personal experience as a springboard. It is interesting
to add here that they both begin this descriptive phenomenological journey at the
time of WWI: Reinach in 1916/1917 while fighting at the Western Front and Walther
in 1918 around the time of the Armistice.
Both Reinach and Walther are overlooked figures in the history of philosophy;
however, Walther’s book The Phenomenology of Mysticism (1923, 1955, 1976) and
her work in parapsychology are well known to scholars familiar with her. Whereas
Reinach’s notes on foreseeing and the experience of God are relatively unknown
and go unmentioned in studies of his phenomenology. In this chapter I will discuss
the experiences of foreseeing and of God for both Reinach and Walther. I will rely
on their first-hand accounts of such experiences, utilizing the battlefield notes of
Reinach from WWI found in his Sämtliche Werke1 and the mystical experience
Walther describes having in 1918 in her book Zum Anderen Ufer.2 I will provide a
translation for Reinach’s textual fragments on the experience of God and Walther’s
mystical account in the Translation Appendix at the end of this chapter. When it comes
to the phenomenological approach and analyzing the structures of these experiences
I mainly turn to Reinach since his notes are lesser known. They precede Walther’s,
and the way he engages with these unusual phenomena is both accessible and highly
probative; his analyses are the perfect example of his phenomenological realism.
The goal of this chapter is to provide an understanding of the religious or uncanny
experiences of both Reinach and Walther, how each uniquely approached describing
such incredible phenomena, and then how Reinach sought to address the issues
of knowledge and metaphysics surrounding such surreal experiences. In the end I
argue that phenomenology is an approach for all kinds of experiences, even the most
unconventional, and thus the potential for further and fresh research is great.
The Phenomenological Approach: Munich and Göttingen
As mentioned, Reinach and Walther approach uncanny phenomena differently, and

the obvious reason for this has to do with their phenomenological teaching. Reinach
was a member of the Munich Circle and a committed phenomenological realist.
He was taught by both Theodor Lipps and Edmund Husserl, so his approach to
phenomenology is a blend of the ideas of those two thinkers. Lipps, like Husserl’s
1 Adolf Reinach, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Karl Schuhmann and Barry Smith (Munich: Philosophia
Verlag, 1989).
2 Gerda Walther, Zum Anderen Ufer (Bonn: Otto Reichl Verlag, 1960).
Phenomenological Approaches to the Uncanny and the Divine … 151
teacher Franz Brentano, actively researched and taught descriptive psychology (that
is, the defining and classifying of various types of mental phenomena, including
judgment, perception, emotion, etc.). Lipps, in fact, had his own conception of phe-
nomenology and it predated Husserl’s. The phenomenological themes he lectured on
before the turn of the 20th century included: (1) objective contents of consciousness
and spatial–temporal relations; (2) the ego; (3) the relations of objective conscious-
ness to the psyche.3 These themes were eventually modified and appeared in his
paper “Psychische Vorgänge und psychische Causalität” (“Psychic Processes and
Psychic Causality”), in which Lipps termed his methodological procedure “purely
phenomenological” [rein phänomenologisch]. What was entailed by this method was
the unprejudiced description of contents. For Lipps the phenomenological method
is a tool to separate the psychical from the physical. Reinach took this idea and
expanded it ontologically, saying that descriptive psychology, “… is not to explain
and reduce to other things. Rather its aim is to illuminate and expose. It intends to
bring to ultimate, intuitive givenness the ‘whatness’ of experience, from which, in
itself, we are so remote.”4
Husserl introduced ideation in Logical Investigations, and as a method it was
understood as “the seeing of an essence” or “essential insight” [Wesensschau].
Ideation is an act whereby consciousness presents something itself (namely, essence).
The essence originarily shows itself and this establishes an insight into the universal
style of being of the individual entities that stand under the eidetic universality.5 For
Reinach this translated into an intuition of the essence, and the necessary laws that
govern them, as well as states of affairs and apriority. That orange is similar to yellow
is grounded in the being of the color orange; it is capable of irrefutable evidence and
obtains regardless of whether anyone thinks it so, and I come to understand this truth
by using ideation. His approach is often referred to as utilizing “pure intuition” into
essences so that one can attain or apprehend the necessary laws that govern them and
their instantiations, and states of affairs.
Reinach’s phenomenological approach does not separate epistemology from
metaphysics, they are done together, and this sets him apart from Husserl and firmly
sets his phenomenology as ontological. The phenomenological realist holds that
there exists a real world independent of human consciousness, and that some things
in this world exist and others subsist. This necessarily leads to the understanding that
different types of objects are given to us in different ways—sounds heard, sweetness
tasted, ideal laws intuited, states of affairs apprehended, etc.— and the only way we
can uncover the different modes of gaining knowledge is by engaging with beings
3 Reinhold Smid, “An Early Interpretation of Husserl’s Phenomenology: Johannes Daubert and the
‘Logical Investigations’,” in Husserl Studies 2: 267–290 (1985).

4 Adolf Reinach, “Concerning Phenomenology.” In J. Crosby (ed.), The A Priori Foundations of Civil
Law: Along with Lecture, “Concerning Phenomenology”, trans. by Dallas Willard (Heusenstamm:
Ontos Verlag, 2010), 147.
5 Eugen Fink, “The Problem of the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl,” in A priori and World:
European Contributions to Husserlian Phenomenology (Boston: Kluwer, 1981), 48.

that are known. Hence, he simultaneously does metaphysics and epistemology. We

must regard all epistemological and logical terms, then, as primarily ontological.6
To be clear, for Reinach and other phenomenological realists, essences and states
of affairs subsist in the world, and while some are timeless and others temporal,
they subsist independently of my acknowledgment. When Reinach looks to describe
phenomena like foreseeing one’s own death or feeling dependent on God, he does
not look inward at the structures of consciousness; rather, he looks outward at what
the experience is and its ontological structure: What is the essence of foreseeing
my death or dependence on God? What are the states of affairs obtaining that I
am grasping about my impending death, etc.? When he speaks of the experience
of God the investigation must address: (1) how we talk about such an experience
both epistemically and metaphysically; (2) where we feel ourselves being sheltered
by God; (3) what do we know about the existence of God (that is, immediate and
mediate knowledge); (4) how we can have such knowledge while lacking empirical
data or a standard object–perception relationship.
Turning to Walther, her teachers included Husserl and Alexander Pfänder. She
began her studies at the University of Munich in 1915/1916 with Pfänder. Reinach
was already at this time fighting at the Western Front. In 1917 she studied with
Husserl, who now was established in Freiburg. Husserl was also committed to a
more subjective, idealist type of phenomenology. In Ideas I, published in 1913,
Husserl’s phenomenology was said to be a descriptive analysis of the essence of
pure consciousness, a science of pure consciousness. In this work we also see the
introduction of eidetic reduction, bracketing, the pure ego, and the key moments of
intentionality noesis and noema. The approach largely looks inwardly, and not at the
real world outside, at the structures of consciousness to obtain their essence.
In 1919 Walther returned to Munich and in 1921 defended her dissertation under
Pfänder. The training she received during this time is reflected in her style: While
Walther is focused on essence, like Reinach, the way she goes about things is different
because she starts from the standpoint of the subject and works outward to the
world. Pfänder’s phenomenology is referred to as a “subjective method” in that it
is the subjective and descriptive study of psychological phenomena. He began his
phenomenology with an investigation into the nature of willing, in which he explored
the experience of willing with its conscious components from the inside, without
referring to its accompanying physical or physiological elements. After exposure to
Husserl, around 1916 this subjective method evolved with an emphasis now on the
need to obtain explicit insight into the essential structure of the phenomena and their
relations to psychological facts.7
6 Lucinda Ann Vandervort Brettler, “The phenomenology of Adolf Reinach: chapters in the theory
of knowledge and legal philosophy.” Ph.D. dissertation, McGill University, 1973, 116.
7 Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, 3rd revised
and enlarged edn. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1994), 175.

Walther begins her Phenomenology of Mysticism with a discussion of the constitu-

tion of persons and human essence, since only persons can have mystical experience.
The person, according to Walther, consists of three aspects: the I-center; the self,
and the essence (which is composed of body, soul, and spirit). God is the ground
of essence. When she seeks to answer how we can grasp God in a mystical way,
Walther starts her approach at the I, the subject who is experiencing God in a way
that is unreflective, direct, and non-rational. This experience is within oneself, as if
the divine stream opened a hidden source inside oneself that allows the rays in from
outside. The I then turns toward its own essence and sees itself through the light of
this other (that is, the eyes and heart of God). It is in grasping God that one can purely
and fully experience one’s own essence; it is only in the full knowledge of God that
this can happen.
Uncanny Experiences
Walther’s mystical experience has two distinct elements: a moment of foreseeing

into the future, and then feeling the presence of something Divine. Her story begins
in the winter of 1918, on the train ride back from visiting her father and stepmother
in Baden-Baden. She recalls that prior to the trip she had been in a strange state: she
had episodes of weakness sweep over her to the point of losing control of her body
and most likely her consciousness too, and she tells of a growing distance from and
disinterest in her life and all she cared about. She had one of these episodes while
eating dinner with her father and stepmother, and she had to use every ounce of her
strength to stay on the chair and eat. When traveling to the train station to return to
Freiburg, she describes her movements as mechanical, robotic, as if her body were
an automaton that she was remotely controlling.
Shortly after boarding the train the first and shortest element of her mystical
experience occurs; it is something foreseen: “Suddenly, I knew with uncanny clarity:
‘When I arrive in Freiburg, I will either be dead or mentally ill—or I will have found
something entirely new, unknown, which gives a different meaning to my entire
life.’”8 She describes the experience of this foreseeing as something she feels with
“unrelenting objectivity” where her mental, physical, and spiritual powers are used
up. Then she feels as if she is sinking inwardly into a dark and endless depth, an
abyss without end, that lacks any support or light:
I felt how my strength faded more and more, I let myself sink into that inner depth without
resistance, sink and sink constantly further. Only one thing I could still think clearly: It was
necessary to hold oneself together with the final residue of strength in oneself in order not to
lose consciousness as well. This consciousness actually consisted, of course, only in feeling
that I was sinking and sinking without knowing where to—as if I was plunging through the
empty, infinite, starless universe. I did and knew only still that it was necessary not to dissolve
myself unconsciously in this dark infinity. I felt, however, that it was only a question of a
8 Gerda Walther, Zum Anderen Ufer, 223.

few moments, and my strength would be entirely used up—and then? What would happen
with me?9
When she finally arrived in Freiburg, her foreseeing experience had come true,
since she found herself alive and not mentally ill. She also found (or it found her)
that incomprehensible, unknown “something” that had already in its brief occurrence
given her life an entirely different meaning.
The next phase of her mystical experience, feeling the presence of something
Divine, begins on the train ride and lasts a long time. Walther is feeling as if she
is sinking into an endless, starless universe, and just after the candle at the window
blows out and all seems rather dark she feels a new source of energy. “As I was
so sinking, however, suddenly, something was streaming towards me from a vast,
infinite distance—something that permeated me with a feeling of deepest safety
and security—but I could not recognize what it was. It increased in intensity; a sea
of warm love and kindness surrounded me. It stayed with me a long time.”10 She
describes herself as being barely conscious on the walk home, and when she gets
inside her apartment she goes straight to the side of her bed, kneels, and puts her face
into the pillows. The experience of the Divine then waves over her again and much
more intensely. She describes this experience saying:
Now, a bright inner glow was streaming toward me from that immeasurable distance; it
surrounded me completely. All the suffering I had ever experienced seemed to have been
extinguished, as if it had never happened, as if I had heard only being told about it, like
about something that had happened to a stranger. From my very depths, I felt born anew and
transformed. I did not know anything anymore about myself and my surroundings; I only
felt that warm flood of love which had taken me up, I saw only that spiritual light that had
penetrated me. Then, entirely gradually, that sea of light and warmth began to retreat again,
slowly and gently releasing me from itself, but in such a way that I was still held by it as
if from a distance for a long time and such that I did not again plunge into the infinite dark
space without support and without strength.11
When this feeling starts to subside and her mental and physical strength return
she realizes that she has been kneeling at her bed for about 30–45 min. She then
wonders what has just happened, and if this divine experience was God himself or
another higher entity serving Him. Later, she arrives at the conclusion that this was
a mystical experience, something absolutely remarkable, given that she was raised
as an atheist, and this experience leads her to give up her political ambitions in the
Social Democratic Party and pursue an academic career. It also opened her eyes to all
the experiences possible for humans, ultimately resulting in her interest not only in
mystical experiences but also parapsychology (for example, séances, clairvoyance,
telepathy, etc.).

But how does one even begin to talk about this kind of uncanny experience in a
way that is dignified and rational? How do you overcome the skepticism that you
would no doubt encounter when telling the average person about feeling the presence
of God or having a foresight into the future? Reinach attempted phenomenologically
to tackle these questions roughly two years before Walther’s mystical experience.
He also had a chance to investigate both the foreseen and the Divine.
During WWI, in 1916 while fighting at the Belgian front, Reinach overhears
conversation at his camp about soldiers foreseeing their own deaths. The particular
conversation he describes in detail in the notes occurs between a staff sergeant and an
infantryman: the infantryman and others of his rank are growing very concerned about
their fellow soldiers, who have a foreseen experience, put their affairs and papers in
order, wrote farewell letters home, then strode out only to be killed. The infantryman
is convinced these experiences are real and true, whereas the staff sergeant thinks
they are pure superstition, the result of exhaustion, and furthermore death in war
is a very likely occurrence that can be somewhat predictable. In listening to this
conversation he realizes that the only way to overcome the skepticism of someone
like the staff sergeant is to provide evidence for these experiences and proof that
knowledge is obtainable from them.
First, we must distinguish what foresight is and is not. Foreseeing does not consist
of feelings or volitions; it influences things (that is, we develop feelings after the
experience and then will our actions based on them). Reinach describes a moment of
foreseeing as, “the subject here appears to grasp by means of foreseeing, correctly or
incorrectly remains to be seen, something from the river of future events, which was
previously not accessible to him prior.”12 In the case of the soldiers from the story,
“What clearly stands out from this foreboding is the horror of future fortunes, which
as a feeling springs from this grasp of foresight, as do all aspirations and reluctance,
willing and not willing …”13 Foresight is very sudden and striking, it hits the subject
all at once that this will happen. What one foresees adds something new to their store
of knowledge, the subject grasps something previously unknown about the future.
The knowledge gained by the subject carries with it a necessity that is absolutely
binding; there is no room for doubt or hope of a different outcome. Furthermore,
the experience leaves one feeling very helpless, as if one had no control over one’s
own life. Foresight is a purely individual experience, it is a glimpse at the causal
chain of that subject’s life—it cannot be shared, it cannot be seen by another. This
also relates to the aspect of certainty the subject feels after experiencing it, since it is
something so highly personal and specific to his or her life that it cannot be a dream
or a mistake.
12 Adolf Reinach, “A Phenomenology of Foreboding/Foreseeing” [“Zur Phänomenologie der

Ahnungen”]. In Michael Kelly and Brian Harding (eds.), Early Phenomenology:Metaphysics,
Ethics, and the Philosophy of Religion (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 27.
13 Adolf Reinach, “A Phenomenology of Foreboding/Foreseeing,” 27 (italics added).
To answer what a foresight is ontologically, and hopefully address skeptics like the
staff sergeant, Reinach’s investigation turns to knowledge, evidence, and structure.
First, foreseeing is intentional—it has content that refers to something. That simply
means foresight has an object, even if that object is not tangible like chairs and tables
that actually stand before us. Reinach writes:
That every foreseeing as such necessarily requires a related content—the “foreseen” as
such—so far stretched is the boundary of its possible contents here. Not only, for exam-
ple, temporally but even future forebodings can refer to something. Within a scientific
investigation a foreseeing of the result can rise up within me; here something forms appar-
ently timeless (atemporal)—a more or less determinate proposition [Satz] or state of affairs
[Sachverhalt]—the related content of a foreseeing. But not this foreseeing content, it being
also identical with the content of a judgment or an apprehension, but rather the foreseeing
as such—not the noematic, but the “noetic” side, to which Husserl speaks about, presents
the real problem.14
The challenge to validating the foreseen is the fact that while they have content
and are felt and influence actions, the object that the content refers to is not empiri-
cally present. However, for Reinach, a phenomenologist with a wealth of experience
investigating entities that span all kinds of being—real, ideal, and intentional; tem-
poral and timeless—this obstacle does not pose such a problem. For Reinach the one
experiencing the foreseen is grasping a state of affairs (the being-dead and all the par-
ticulars surrounding that event), making judgments based on when they apprehend,
and this means the content of the foreseen is in the world:
Through foresight we grasp—or rather we believe that we grasp—something that was previ-
ously concealed. And a conviction can also be grounded in the foreboding, which in strength
and inner certainty itself need be in no way inferior to the conviction based upon knowledge.
From the foreboding of immanent death arises the certain conviction of having to die soon.15
This also entails that foresight has an essence and essential structures, and so the
phenomenologist must go to the grounding structures it has. Reinach never finished
this fragment, instead turning to the experience of God. However, what he says in
relation to God actually addresses both mystical experience and foresight.
According to John Oesterreicher in his book Walls Crumbling: Seven Jewish
Philosophers Discover Christ, in 1915 Reinach began to discover God and he told
his wife, Anna, that the first few weeks at the front were terrible, but then God’s peace
came to him.16 He also wrote to Dietrich von Hildebrand during that year and told
him that a change had come over him, “a change to the very roots of my being.”17 In
1916, while on furlough, Reinach converted from Judaism to Protestantism, and the
reason he gives , gathered from letters to his friends, is a direct result of witnessing
14 AdolfReinach, “A Phenomenology of Foreboding/Foreseeing,” 26–27.

15 AdolfReinach, “A Phenomenology of Foreboding/Foreseeing,” 28.
16 John M. Oesterreicher, Walls are Crumbling: Seven Jewish Philosophers Discover Christ (New
York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1952), 122.

17 John M. Oesterreicher, Walls are Crumbling, 122.
the horrors of war. In the biography of Dietrich von Hildebrand, Soul of a Lion,
Alice von Hildebrand writes that Reinach told Dietrich in a letter “that the terrible
sufferings that the two warring sides were experiencing had clearly the meaning of
calling men back to God.”18 While it is not clear or documented if he had a mystical
experience like Walther, as we do not have a first-hand account, his descriptions are
similar to Walther’s, which leads me to think something Divine touched him while
at the Front. Reinach tells his wife in 1916:
My plan is clear before my eyes; naturally, it is very modest. I should like to start from the
inner experience of God, the experience of being sheltered in Him, and shall be content to
show that “objective science” cannot gainsay it. I should like to expound the full meaning of
this experience, to show how far it can claim objectivity, to demonstrate why it is a genuine
cognition, though of its own kind; and finally, to draw conclusions.19
Reinach refers to God as Das Absolute: God is the sum of all being that is actual and
potential; He is beyond all space and time; His attributes are identical to His essence,
and His essence necessitates His existence; and God is all that He can be, infinitely
real and perfect. Had God not created the universe and everything in it, there would
only be Him. Creating goes hand in hand with sustaining, so with the same intense
and conscious (and loving) act that called us all into existence God, at every moment,
is concerned with everyone and with a love that is intensely beyond comprehension.
Regarding the relationship between God and humans, God, before our minds, is
absolute highest and we are absolutely below Him. This position dictates our conduct
towards God: “The experience of absolute shelteredness permeating the one who up
to now has lacked faith leads him to God and simultaneously—in accordance with
[God’s] absoluteness—to a God enthroned in absolute highness.”20 In other words,
even one who has a mystical experience and was previously unacquainted with God
will know that He is absolutely above and beyond. Someone like Walther, an atheist,
can grasp immediately, when engulfed by the Divine, her position in relation to God
because of His Absoluteness. Reinach never met Walther and yet, uncannily, what
he writes here captures her experience.
Furthermore, on our relation to and experience of God, he discusses our feelings
of dependence, gratitude, and love:
We humans, standing in time and space and the earthly world grasp what is beyond the earthly.
This is the most precious gift with which God has blessed us. And not only do we grasp what
is beyond the earthly; but in the acts in which it comes to be given to us, there mirrors itself
in a certain manner the absolute fullness which we have predicated [zusprechen] to what
is beyond the earthly. In experiencing God, we feel dependent on him, we feel gratitude to
him, we love him; and all these—dependence, gratitude, and love—are not relative and able
to be increased as it is with the relationships between human and human, but they are of
an absolute nature . In this manner, the earthly experiencing also contains a content beyond
18 Alice von Hildebrand, The Soul of a Lion: Dietrich von Hildebrand (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 2000), 170. This book is based on a very long and detailed account Dietrich wrote to his
wife, Alice, later in his life.
19 John M. Oesterreicher, Walls are Crumbling, 122–123.
20 Adolf Reinach, Fragment on Philosophy of Religion, §1, paragraph 2 (see Translation Appendix).
what is earthly—and this is even how it must be. For when that which is beyond the earthly is
grasped in acts which take a position, then, there must correspond to the absoluteness which
is being grasped an absoluteness of the content of these acts.21
The experience of God is an intentional one; it has content, and that content, as
with the foreseen, is not the typical empirical, tangible data, but rather something
beyond and ontologically different. This also entails that the experience of God, for
Reinach, is something that can be a type of knowledge: there is a state of affairs that
I am apprehending and the ontological status of it is unique.
As with the foreseen, Reinach speaks out against those who would say that the
experience of God is something that belongs in the sphere of feelings, which means
that it is not knowledge. Here, he specifically refers to the “man of science,” the
one who would see religious experience as something that fails to be valid, rational,
and, most importantly, to present empirical evidence. In many ways this point refers
to those, like Immanuel Kant, who saw belief as a judgment that was sufficient
subjectively (that is, conviction; true for me) but insufficient objectively (that is, not
certain for everyone); hence, it could be considered neither knowledge nor truth since
the latter depends on agreement with the object. In religious experience that object
is not one we all can see, and so men of science will talk about religious matters as
based in beliefs and feelings. Reinach writes:
By what right, though, does one relegate the experience of God into a sphere of feelings
outside of knowledge? There are feelings which, without referring to objects, suffuse a
person’s mood or disposition, a joyful mood, a feeling of deep depression, which have, to
be sure, their real causes as do all experiences, but which relate experientially not at all to
something to which they refer. In this case, we certainly are beyond anything having to do
with knowledge, beyond all opposition of true and false …22
The first way that Reinach responds to the man of science is to say that there are
many ways that we can be affected: for some the object or cause is clearly visible
and sometimes it is not. Psychology describes numerous cases of moods affecting
us or a gut feeling or even something we foresee. In the case of Walther her mystical
experience during the train ride and at her apartment contain no physical object, but
rather a sinking feeling, something streaming toward her, a feeling of a sea of love
and safety, a bright inner light, etc., and all of this she felt with the utmost certainty
and with her whole body. The experience is as real and as certain for her as eating
a sandwich or stubbing her toe. Reinach’s point is that to require that all experience
have an empirical object to be valid is to have a bias for the physically or externally
present as well as to neglect the vast array of experiences we humans can have, ones
that can provide knowledge.23 Reinach continues:
22 Adolf Reinach, Loose Notes, paragraph 2 (see Translation Appendix).
23 When speaking about his plan to investigate religious experience, referred to earlier, Reinach
says, “Of course a presentation like this has nothing to offer him who lives in God’s sight. But it can
steady the one who waivers, who lets the objections of science confuse him, and it can lead onward
him who these objections have stayed from walking with God.” See John M. Oesterreicher, Walls
are Crumbling, 123. AU: is “lead onward him who” correct?
One may speak at this point—sufficiently prematurely—about merely “subjective experi-

ences”; we are, however, here first of all interested only in the fact that these experiences
come to be present with the claim to grasp being, thus, to be knowledge, contrary to the
experiences which do not make such a claim. We may here leave entirely undiscussed the
justification of this claim. Such a claim we find, however, also in the case of the religious
experience from which we have taken our point of departure. Inasmuch as the ego feels itself
in a relationship to God, inasmuch as it feels, with blissful certainty, its dependence on him
and its security in him, something new discloses itself to it, it grasps a connection which is
now firm for it and to which it adheres knowingly through all time. It is certainly not the case
that the subject would have pursued this relationship in an attitude of “seeking knowledge”;
but even theoretical states of affairs can light up for us without any seeking and, so to speak,
against our will.24
What we grasp when we feel ourselves in a relationship with God is knowledge,

although it is not the same type of knowledge sought after by the empirical sciences.
The last line of the above fragment rings very true for Walther’s experience: she did
not travel seeking to know God or experience Him, God found her—God sought
Walther, the atheist Marxist. When we seek to know something, we have some kind
of idea or guess what we are looking for, but then what is it to experience something
you had no idea existed? This must add something rather unique to the knowledge
grasped since it is of a kind that was unbeknownst to you and unsought; the “object”
came to you and gave you an experience against your will. While belief in God can
be a choice or a tradition, for some it is not of their choosing at all.
In his notes to “Structure of the Experience” Reinach distinguishes between
two types of knowledge involved in religious experience: explicit and experience-
immanent. In mystical experience as well as the foreseen the knowledge gained is
the latter kind. It is knowledge that comes about only in experience itself, rather than
after the fact, when we cognize, make judgments, and carry out acts. Reinach adds:
The taking-as-reality [Wirklichkeitsnehmung] of the feeling of oneself sheltered [Geborgen-
fuehlen] in God is quite different; logically speaking, the former would be the presupposition
for the latter. However, no one would draw a logical conclusion [from this]. Rather, it is imma-
nently contained in the sense of the experience itself. Two aspects we must separate here:
On the one hand, the knowledge of being sheltered and, on the other, the knowledge of the
existence of God, i.e., an immediate and a mediate immanent knowledge. The experiences of
gratitude and love contain only a mediate knowledge; as position-takings [Stellungnahmen]
they are in a certain sense derivative experiences.25
Walther’s mystical experience possesses the immediate knowledge, but it seems

to lack the mediate variety. The first thing she describes is the feeling of security and
safety, and that a warm sea of love and kindness are surrounding her. The immediate
knowledge of God is immanent experience. These are things she can only know
while being held in the experience. In this case, being an atheist, she lacks any prior
understanding of what a religious experience entails. Because she still is unsure
about what happened to her or why—she speculates it could be God or an entity
close to him—she does not have the mediate knowledge of something like God’s
24 Adolf Reinach, Loose Notes, paragraph 2 (see Translation Appendix).

existence or a feeling of love or gratitude toward God. She will get there later, of
course, in her studies, but at this point the description indicates she is dwelling in
the immediate knowledge the mystical experience provides. Regardless, there is still
knowledge in the experience of God. Just as Reinach, in his phenomenological realist
ontology, sought to describe kinds of being beyond real and idea, here he attempts
to detail types of knowledge that fall outside the regular parameters, so that all kinds
of uncanny experiences can have their rightful share.
Reinach’s experience of God is one of feeling not only sheltered but also absolutely
dependent. The state of affairs obtaining here is intimately contained in the experience
and part of experience-immanent knowledge, and the “object” that he perceives is
not before him, but absolutely above and beyond him. The knowledge gained here is
not something on which he needs to reflect; rather, it is immediately known to him
that he is loved, sheltered, and dependent on God. This knowledge is certain and as
real as anything else cognition has granted him. He writes:
I experience my absolute dependence on God. Insofar as I myself am concerned with this
experienced relation, the state of affairs does not stand before me, but rather I myself experi-
ence myself in this relation, which then naturally cannot be objective for me. In this manner,
also, if I perceive an object, the corresponding relation between perception and object is
not objective to me. Then, however, a difference immediately appears: in perceiving there
arises in me, through reflection on it, the knowledge that “I perceive”. In the experience
of dependence, I find myself dependent without a reflection being necessary, which indeed
could also lead only to the knowledge that I feel myself dependent.26
Concluding Remarks
As mentioned earlier, there is no documentation or letter stating that Reinach had a

mystical experience like Walther did; there exists only the words of von Hildebrand
and Oesterreicher in addition to Reinach’s descriptive notes. Regardless of whether he
had a full-blown uncanny, disorienting mystical experience or simply had a moment
of deep realization that he, surviving on a battlefield surrounded by immense amounts
of death, destruction, and constant risk, felt sheltered and loved by God, both count
as an experience of God. Both result in knowledge, and both have an “object,” even
if that object does not exist in the same way tables and chairs do. Reinach has
clearly shown that phenomenological realism has the tools to describe and explore
experiences like that of God or foresight, and in a way that is objective and valid. But,
he has barely scratched the surface of what phenomenology can do with uncanny
and surreal experiences. Walther extended this phenomenological work even further
into parapsychology, but because her work has been understudied her efforts remain
far too silent. It is time to change: we must take phenomenology into the dark and
mysterious corners of experience, the places empirical science dares not go.
Translation Appendix (Translated by Kimberly

Baltzer-Jaray and Fritz Wenisch)
Adolf Reinach
Fragment: Remarks on a Philosophy of Religion (1916/1917).
Das Absolute (Paragraphs 5–7, 12)
Obviously, we must distinguish between [the following two items:] On the one hand,
[there are] the positions one person occupies with regard to another and which subse-
quently color [the first person’s] acts—his questioning, responding, etc.—with regard
to the [second person] in a sense identical to these positions, or which prescribe from
the outset acts of a specific content, such as demanding instead of asking; on the
other hand, there is the determination of direction of the acts mentioned last. What is
foundational in general is certainly the difference obtaining from person to person.
It might very well be [the case], however, that it is only [überhaupt erst] certain
experiences with regard to a person suddenly imposing themselves on me which
compels me to assume a position at a certain level, that, for example, compassion
with a human results in a simultaneous “looking down” on this human.
All these relations become absolute in God. We look up to him; but we do it in a
manner different from [looking up to] humans. In these latter cases [here], increases
in any way are possible. The phenomenal relation to the humans ranking highest is
not of such a kind that relations still directed higher could not still be thought of. God,
however, [stands] before [our minds] as the absolute highest. This earth’s powerful
may stand on steep heights; God is enthroned in heaven. The position we occupy
with regard to him—an absolute “below” relative to an absolute “above”—prescribes
to us our experiential conduct: Trust, love, dependence, just as other experiences,
be it benevolence or generosity, are immediately recognized as meaningless. The
position with regard to God is the determinant for our experiential conduct toward
him. Here also, however, reversals of the relation obtaining in itself are possible
for us. The experience of absolute shelteredness permeating the one who up to now
has lacked faith leads him to God and simultaneously—in accordance with [God’s]
absoluteness—to a God enthroned in absolute highness.
Thus, we can speak of absoluteness in three different, naturally, of course, closely
related, senses: God is given to us in absolute highness; accordingly, our individual
experiencing is characterized by the direction pointing to absolute highness; and next
to this formal absoluteness, there is also the absoluteness of the material content, the
complete “being fulfilled” of trust, gratitude, and love. An inner reasonableness
obtains between these [instances of] absoluteness; not in the sense, however, that
one could be deduced from the other through a logical inference; but in a way that
internally motivated transitions take place: What is [being] given as highest, what
our experiencing lifts itself up to, deserves an absolute fullness [Fülle] of love; just
as inversely an absolute trust filling me must seek its intentional object in absolute
highness.
We humans, standing in time and space and the earthly world, grasp what is
beyond the earthly. This is the most precious gift with which God has blessed us.
And not only do we grasp what is beyond the earthly; but in the acts in which it
comes to be given to us, there mirrors itself in a certain manner the absolute fullness
which we have assigned [zusprechen] to predicated of that which is beyond the
earthly. In experiencing God, we feel dependent on him, we feel gratitude to him,
we love him; and all these—dependence, gratitude, and love—are not relative and
able to be increased as it is with the relationships between human and human, but
they are of an absolute nature. In this manner, the earthly experiencing also contains
a content beyond what is earthly—and this is even how it must be. For when that
which is beyond the earthly is grasped in acts which take a position, then, there must
correspond to the absoluteness which is being grasped an absoluteness of the content
of these acts. These all are meager theoretical expositions. But what is hidden behind
them is the most precious core of our life, that which alone can hold us upright in
the storms of life. [We may be] thrown to and fro in hopes and disappointments, in
fear and anguish and expectation, in love and hatred, in gratitude and vengefulness,
being confined in the steps of the more and inferior of all social relationships; but
here is the domain of what is inviolable and of eternal firmness.
Structure of Experience27
One might ask whether in our experience [Erlebnis], which indeed quite certainly
includes knowledge [Erkenntnis]28 , if the knowledge under consideration is a priori
or of an empirical character, or whether knowledge of a third and perhaps quite
unique type is present here. Let us take a priori states of affairs as such, for which
the predication through the subject according to its essence is required, and which
thereby becomes known, so that we immerse ourselves in the essence of the subject,
then there is no a priori knowledge here. But, on the other hand, there is also no
empirical knowledge, for it concerns no contingent and temporally variable matter
of fact. Here, two different intersecting distinctions must be separated.
27 The German word Erlebnis translated here into English as “experience,” must be understood
to carry with it the idea that experience is something a person lives through or has lived.
28 The German word Erkenntnis translated here into English as “knowledge,” must be understood
to mean knowledge that is cognized (that is, it is acquired through cognition and/or perception). It
is a knowing about.
We separate explicit and experience-immanent [erlebnisimmanente] [kinds of]

knowledge [Erkenntnisse]. So, the enjoyment of a work of art is not knowledge,
but forms the foundation for and releases from out of itself the knowledge that
a picture is beautiful. However, here one might ask oneself: the knowledge “it is
beautiful,” does it not have its own intuitive foundation [Anschauungsgrundlage]?
Otherwise, a perception in relation to any knowledge of actuality is to be judged
quite differently [Wirklichkeitserkenntnis], insofar as the latter must always refer
back to the perception for its verification. After all, there is even in the perception
a taking-as-real [Fuer-wirklich-Nehmen], though not also actual knowledge. The
taking-as-reality [Wirklichkeitsnehmung] of the feeling of oneself sheltered [Gebor-
genfuehlen] in God is quite different; logically speaking, the former would be the
presupposition for the latter. However, no one would draw a logical conclusion [from
this]. Rather, it is immanently contained in the sense of the experience itself. Two
aspects we must separate here: On the one hand, the knowledge of being sheltered
and on the other the knowledge of the existence of God, i.e., an immediate and a
mediate immanent knowledge. The experiences of gratitude and love contain only a
mediate knowledge; as position-takings [Stellungnahmen] they are in a certain sense
derivative experiences.
I experience my absolute dependence on God. Insofar as I myself am concerned
with this experienced relation, the state of affairs does not stand before me, but rather
I myself experience myself in this relation, which then naturally cannot be objective
for me. In this manner, also, if I perceive an object, the corresponding relation between
perception and object is not objective to me. Then, however, a difference immediately
appears: in perceiving there arises in me, through reflection on it, the knowledge that
“I perceive.” In the experience of dependence, I find myself dependent without a
reflection being necessary, which indeed could also lead only to the knowledge that
I feel myself dependent.
Skeptical Considerations
He who has been blessed with such an experience may be raised above all hardships
and doubts of life; he may experience a reversal and transformation in himself that is
comparable to no other occurrence in his life; he may have attained a firm direction
that now makes all steps of his life firm and certain—but what has happened beyond
this pure individual event in the existence of an individual? Especially, to what
extent is true knowledge fostered? How can such a subjective experience lay claim
to validity for the individual or for all humankind in general? So many doubts will
make themselves felt in the positions [erkenntnismäßigen] of most people regarding
knowledge, there will be so much rejection from the outset that one will scarcely
take the trouble to formulate the deliberations precisely.
Loose Notes (1916).
Assessment of the Experience
It does not take an involved debate of how people face this experience [Erlebnis]. The
pious person sees in it one of the many paths that lead to God. The man of science29
[Wissenschaft] and the scientifically educated person relegate it to the sphere of mere
feelings which—whether or not deceptive—in any case lack the objective dignity
of knowledge. If he believes in God, he will assign to this experience its place in a
province which lies not only beyond his own special science, but beyond all science
altogether. And if he is a convinced atheist, he will counter it with all those objections
which objective science can hold against it. In both cases, he will, as a follower of
genuine science, see in it only an object, but not a source of knowledge; for him,
there can only be the question in what way that experience comes about, how it
is motivated in the total stream of psychical experiencing, and how its effects take
place.
By what right, though, does one relegate the experience of God into a sphere of
feelings outside of knowledge? There are feelings which, without referring to objects,
suffuse a person’s mood disposition, a joyful mood, a feeling of deep depression,
which have, to be sure, their real causes as do all experiences, but which relate expe-
rientially not at all to something to which they refer. In this case, we certainly are
beyond anything having to do with knowledge, beyond all opposition of true and
false. We come already closer to it in all those cases in which there is an “about”
of feelings. Certainly, one can speak of a justified and an unjustified sadness about
an occurrence, no matter how far we are even here still removed from the function
of knowledge. One can speak of real knowledge only in those cases in which a
recognition of a state of affairs takes place, where something that obtains is “appre-
hended,” where a “discovering” is possible and a knowing which finds its foundation
in discovering and grasping. One is, in this case, not only to think about the seeing
of theoretical connections, about the cases in which a mathematical state of affairs
illuminates us, in which an event in the world of senses vividly confronts us: Even
when moral values and disvalues, for example, are vividly grasped by us or when
we most intimately sense the value of love or the disvalue of envy—even here exists
“discovery,” “grasping,” and knowing based on it. One may speak at this point—suf-
ficiently prematurely—about merely “subjective experiences”; we are, however, here
first of all interested only in the fact that these experiences come to be present with
the claim to grasp being, thus, to be knowledge, contrary to the experiences which do
not make such a claim. We may here leave entirely undiscussed the justification of
this claim. Such a claim we find, however, also in the case of the religious experience
from which we have taken our point of departure. Inasmuch as the ego feels itself in
29 “Science” here needs to be understood as an academic study that includes natural sciences, social
sciences, and the humanities.

a relationship to God, inasmuch as it feels, with blissful certainty, its dependence on

him and its security in him, something new discloses itself to it, it grasps a connec-
tion which is now firm for it and to which it adheres knowingly through all time. It
is certainly not the case that the subject would have pursued this relationship in an
attitude of “seeking knowledge”; but even theoretical states of affairs can light up
for us without any seeking and, so to speak, against our will.
Gerda Walther
Selections from “Sturz in eine andere Welt,” a chapter in Zum Anderen Ufer
(pp. 222–225)
I was getting more and more into a strange state. Everything around me became
for me inwardly strangely unusually distant and of no concern, as if basically, it had
nothing to do with me. To be sure, I saw and heard everything that happened around
me, but it was strangely shadow-like as if it was not really there at all, as if the actually
real in which I would be able to be really fully immersed, with which I was entirely
able to resonate internally, must lie somewhere else. The sun was shining as always,
but everything was so oddly pale—just what was this? At times, I was filled with a
strange inner tension, as if I had to hold myself together with all my strength so as
not to fall apart, as if I could no longer hold on to my thoughts, and suddenly had
to lose consciousness. In such moments, a sudden fear seized me that my strength
might suddenly fail, and that I would no longer be able to hold myself upright. I
succeeded, however, time and again to overcome, with the greatest exertion, these
states of weakness so that no one, not even father, noticed anything about them.
During the Winter Semester of 1918, I had again, as usually, on a cold weekend,
traveled home to Baden-Baden. I was sitting for dinner with father and with “Aunt
Sigrun.” Soon, it was time to travel back again. Once again, that strange weakness
overcame me. I feared to fall off the chair; I was able to stay calmly seated and
continue to eat only through the utmost exertion of all strength.
Father asked, “Why are you suddenly so quiet?” He almost had noticed something.
I responded calmly, “Oh, I just remembered a very difficult problem from a lec-
ture.”
Father stated, smiling: “Leave your tricky problems alone at least on a Sunday.”
I had to hurry if I did not want to miss the streetcar to the train station. I asked
myself, “What will possibly happen when I come here again—will I do it at all?”
I traveled mechanically to the train station, showed my ticket, and boarded the
train. It was really as if I did not do all of this myself, but [rather] an automaton
with which I was somehow connected to over a very far distance. With this, I was
secretly surprised that everything went so smoothly, that I inserted the ticket correctly,
changed trains in Oos, and that there, in the next train, I correctly took a seat in a
compartment.
At that time, the trains ran without illumination. Besides myself, two vacationers
sat by the window ahead. They had attached to the folding table a small candle stump
that weakly illuminated the nearest surrounding. I squeezed myself in the opposite
corner at the door.
Suddenly, I knew with uncanny clarity: “When I arrive in Freiburg, I will either be
dead or mentally ill—or I will have found something entirely new, unknown, which
gives a different meaning to my entire life.”
I felt it with unrelenting objectivity: All my mental, spiritual, and physical powers
were exhausted. I seemed to myself like an entirely burned down candle—even
smaller than the stump over there by the window, like a wick that only flickers a bit
now and then and threatens to become extinct at any moment. Then, it felt to me as if
I was sinking, sinking inwardly in a dark, endless depth in which there was nowhere
a support or a light. At the same time, it seemed to me as if I would become more and
more distant from everything that up to now had been dear and valuable to me. I did
not care, however; there was nothing that could hold me back. Father? He had Aunt
Sigrun, and soon, he would himself die. Professor Pfänder? He had his wife and his
work. Socialism? Many were fighting for it; so, one more or less did not make any
difference. The unfolding of my foundational essence [Grundwesen], of the nucleus
of my soul [Seelenkern]? What did it matter? Thousands fell victim to the war, why
then should just I outlive it? I would have liked to continue living only if there would
be something that would give all of it an even higher, ultimate meaning, something
through which the entire world would suddenly look totally different—but what was
that supposed to be?
I felt how my strength faded more and more, I let myself sink into that inner depth
without resistance, sink and sink constantly further. Only one thing I could still think
clearly: It was necessary to hold oneself together with the final residue of strength
in oneself in order not to lose consciousness as well. This consciousness actually
consisted, of course, only in feeling that I was sinking and sinking without knowing
where to—as if I was plunging through the empty, infinite, starless universe. I did
and knew only still that it was necessary not to dissolve myself unconsciously in
this dark infinity. I felt, however, that it was only a question of a few moments, and
my strength would be entirely used up—and then? What would happen with me? I
myself had no reserves anymore; if some new strength would not stream to me from
somewhere else, yes, then I would possibly be extinguished. The thought about this
was, however, no longer uncomfortable or even dreadful.
Now, the candle stump by the window also went out—just as if the exterior
darkness should correspond to the darkness within me.
As I was so sinking, however, suddenly, something was streaming toward me
from a vast, infinite distance—something that permeated me with a feeling of deepest
safety and security—but I could not recognize what it was. It increased in intensity;
a sea of warm love and kindness surrounded me.
I stayed in this state for a long time. The train stopped: Freiburg! I had arrived
at the destination of my journey. Thus, I had after all not become the victim of
death or a mental illness! I had found, however, that entirely different, unknown,
incomprehensible “something”; otherwise, I would have, on my trip, still been ruined
mentally or physically—or both. As if sleepwalking, I left the train, crossed the
barrier, and took the next streetcar to my apartment. I was still entirely engulfed by that
distant sea that had taken me into itself. It was as if my consciousness was reaching
out of it only to the extent that I could find home. I went, without turning on the light,
straight to my room, I sank on my knees in front of my bed and pressed my face into
the pillows—and there, it took hold of me even stronger: Now, a bright inner glow was
streaming toward me from that immeasurable distance; it surrounded me completely.
All the suffering I had ever experienced seemed to have been extinguished, as if it had
never happened, as if I had heard only being told about it, like about something that
had happened to a stranger. From my very depths, I felt born anew and transformed.
I did not know anything anymore about myself and my surroundings; I only felt that
warm flood of love which had taken me up, I saw only that spiritual light that had
penetrated me. Then, entirely gradually, that sea of light and warmth began to retreat
again, slowly and gently releasing me from itself, but in such a way that I was still
held by it like from a distance for a long time and such that I did not again plunge
into the infinite dark space without support and without strength.
I got up slowly. How long had I been kneeling in front of the bed in this way? I
did not know; all sense of space and time had disappeared from me, but according to
the clock, about half to three quarters of an hour might have passed. What was it that
had taken me up? Was it God? A ray of His immeasurable love, His all-penetrating
spirit? Or was it only a radiance of a higher being ministering to Him?
Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray is a sessional lecturer at King’s University College (UWO) in the depart-
ments of Philosophy, and Social Justice and Peace Studies. She is the President of the North Amer-
ican Society for Early Phenomenology (NASEP) and author of the blog on Adolf Reinach, Hosted
on the Open Commons of Phenomenology: http://reinach.ophen.org. She has spent nearly 20 years
studying the body of work Reinach left behind after his death in WWI, and her recent publications
include translations of his rough notes and letters from the battlefield, his contributions to the phi-
losophy of justice, and the debates about the nature of essence he had with Jean Héring.
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1938. Ahnen und Schauen unserer germanischen Vorfahren, im Lichte der Parapsychologie.
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1950. Der Okkultismus im Dritten Reich, I. Neue Wissenschaft: Zeitschrift für kritischen
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Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 2

Antonio Calcagno Editor

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15896

ISSN 2523-8760 ISSN 2523-8779 (electronic)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950778

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018

Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences

Paderborn, Germany Ruth Hagengruber

Part I The Life and Work of Gerda Walther

Part II Social Ontology and the Self

Part III Religion and Mysticism

About the Editor

Antonio Calcagno is Professor of Philosophy at King’s University College,

Angela Ales Bello Pontiﬁcal Lateran University, Rome, Italy

Anna Maria Pezzella Pontiﬁcal Lateran University, Rome, Italy

Gerda Walther (1897–1977) was a prominent member of the early phenomeno-

based on experiments, events, or narrative accounts to establish the possibility or

Antonio Calcagno’s chapter, “Gerda Walther and the Possibility of a Non-

interests changed from politics and psychology to philosophy to religion and

Abstract Gerda Walther, a student of Alexander Pfänder and Edmund Husserl,

Keywords Historical materialism · Social ontology · Mysticism · George-Kreis

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 3

1 Walther (1960: 52–53).

geschichte (WS 1916/17) in Ana 317 B.V.4.

9 Walther (1960: 193–194).

footnote in Husserl (1994: 266).

course, Übungen zur Geschichtsphilosophie.

A.III.2.4—Hegel’s dialektische Methode (14.XI.1922).

Rickert,29 Friedrich Gundolf (a member of the George-Kreis),30 and Hans Gruhle.31

Bemerkungen zu dem Georgebuch von Prof. F. Gundolf (ca. 1923).

A.III.2.7—Was heißt: Sprachgedächtnis. Referat in dem sprachpsychologischen Seminar von Prof.

Oheimb; Ana 317 B.II.3. Cf. Walther (1960: 375).

posthumously published writings. After Schrenck-Notzing’s death in February 1929,

Avé-Lallemant, E. (1975). Die Nachlässe der Münchener Phänomenologen in der Bayerischen

Rodney K. B. Parker is a postdoc and lead researcher on Women in Early Phenomenology at

Marina Pia Pellegrino

Keywords Fundamental human essence · I-center · Telepathy · Embedment

Orienting Oneself in Multiple Experiences

Translated by Antonio Calcagno.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 11

The Phenomenological Method

As a young student, Walther first encountered phenomenology while following the

Walther knew while frequenting Stein’s introductory courses on phenomenology that

Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Vol. 1) (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1923).

consciousness is correlated to a lived experience [Erlebnis] of pure consciousness.

The Fundamental Human Essence: The I-Center

Walther seeks in her work to understand the fundamental essence [Grundwesen]

9 Walther, Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften, 16.

14 Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik, 43.

By deploying concrete experiences, Walther retrospectively reflects on the direc-

16 Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik, 37–38.

18 Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik, 115–117.

feelings of the other subject penetrate my very embeddedness, thereby affirming my

20 Gerda Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik, 65–66.

Telepathic union is to be distinguished from the union between members of a com-

The Phenomenology of Mysticism may be considered Gerda Walther’s main work.

25 Walther, Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften, 39–40.

and Marianne Sawicki (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2000).

der Mystik, 140.

32 Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik, 144.

Alessandro Salice and Genki Uemura

Abstract The chapter contextualizes and reconstructs Walther’s theory of social

Keywords Social act · Walther · Reinach · Husserl · Constitution